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http://www.alternet.org/food/wouldnt-it-suck-if-humanity-went-extinct-because-we-threw-away-too-much-food-we-could-haveThe Movement To Stop Food From Being Wasted Is Boominghttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104167684/0/alternet~The-Movement-To-Stop-Food-From-Being-Wasted-Is-Booming

New ways of dealing with the massive amounts of excess food which exacerbates drought and climate change.

Ron Clark is no stranger to food waste. After more than 20 years of working to supply fresh produce to California’s food banks, he knows every point along the route from farm to table where produce gets plucked from the human food chain, for cosmetic reasons, and composted, fed to pigs, or buried in a landfill. Clark was filling 60-80 truckloads per week with recovered food, bringing 125 million pounds of perfectly healthy produce to hungry food bank clients, by the time he left the food bank system. Today he looks on in awe at a new wave of innovators looking to tackle the problem of food waste. Most of them are 20-somethings fresh out of college, he told me. And they’re using business models, rather than nonprofits, to get it done.

An estimated 40 percent of all food grown never gets eaten by humans, and hunger isn’t the only consequence. Wasted food also represents wasted water, and contributes to global warming, thanks to the methane produced when it rots in the landfill.

But the movement to stop food waste is booming. In 2014, one of the France’s largest food retailers, Intermarche, began selling “ugly” produce at a discount. Store traffic increased 24 percent. In mid-July a petition was initiated at Change.org calling on Wal-Mart and Whole Foods to do the same. At press time nearly 8,000 people had signed on to the petition, which was put forth by Jordan Figueiredo of Endfoodwaste.org. Figueiredo, whose day job as a municipal solid waste manager in the Bay Area, is an anomaly in the movement, both because of his advanced age—36—and because his web page is a nonprofit.

Many, if not most, of the newer efforts to end food waste are just as mission-driven as a food bank, but are sustained by sales of recovered produce, and products made from it, rather than grants and donations. And they are run by kids.

“It really is a millennial movement. It’s so refreshing to see a whole generation of people so passionate and excited about this issue,” Clark told me. And he’s impressed by their ability to bring in dollars, from sales and investors. “They’re money magnets,” he said.

“They aren’t interested in old organizations, which tend to be hierarchical and structured, like corporations. The energy in the new generation doesn’t mix with that culture. They’re going after the food waste issue in different ways, and for slightly different reasons. The millennials certainly care deeply about hunger, but are primarily concerned with saving the planet.”

Wasted food is responsible for about 45 trillion gallons of wasted water, according to 22 year-old Evan Lutz, CEO of Hungry Harvest in Baltimore. Hungry Harvest recovers surplus produce from farms and wholesalers, and sells it in CSA-style boxes at a steep discount to what non-cosmetically-challenged produce would cost. For each box sold, a healthy meal is donated to someone in need. Lutz sees his work as an inevitable result of a profoundly unsustainable situation.

“Our society can’t sustain itself when 6 billion pounds of produce is wasted annually, while 51 million Americans are food-insecure,” he told me.

And despite his lofty ambitions, Lutz has no reservations about turning a profit on his work. “We are for-profit so we can scale in a sustainable way.” Hungry Harvest recently secured some investments that “exceeded our expectations,” Lutz says.

When speaking with these young, business-savvy entrepreneurs, you hear a lot of economic jargon, like “scaling,” “aggregate,” and “resource constrained.” You also hear words like “shocked, aghast, insane, and disgusted,” as they recount their first glimpse of the enormity of the food waste problem.

“It’s appalling. It’s insane. It makes you want to do something about it,” recalls Claire Cummings, 25, of her first farm-level glimpse of food waste. Cummings is the Waste Specialist for Bon Appetit Management Company, a national restaurant company that operates more than 650 cafes in 33 states. The Waste Specialist position was created for Cummings, who was fresh out of Bon Appetit’s fellowship program. In partnership with Compass Group, the parent company, she quickly spearheaded the campaign called Imperfectly Delicious Produce, which searches for ways to recover cosmetically challenged produce that would otherwise have been wasted, and get it into the hands of its chefs. Just a year in, the program has been implemented in 10 states. And the plan is to bring recovered produce to all of their accounts, Cummings told me.

“We are not exclusively going after foods that already have a secondary market, such as tomatoes or lemons for juice,” she told me. “We are looking at the food that is truly getting wasted. ”

With the funding and organizational clout of a major corporation behind her, Cummings has made impressive strides. And while there are definitely cost savings in going this route—they average about 38 percent, she says—that isn’t why they are doing it. “We are driven by the desire to put money back in the pockets of farmers and save this perfectly good produce from going to waste.” Nonetheless, those favorable economics are nonetheless an important part of why such a diversity of new food recovery startups are flourishing.

On the other coast, a Bay Area start-up called Revive Foods began making jam out of recovered produce about a year ago. Co-founder Zoe Wong came from a nonprofit background, where, she says, "I felt frustrated constantly having to rely on donations in the nonprofit world and wanted to have the ability to be financially sustainable so I could get stuff done."

The business was going well, but she and co-founder Kay Feker weren’t satisfied.

“We realized that remaining a consumer product food business was going to be tough to scale from an impact perspective,” Wong told me. “By pivoting to focus on selling recovered produce to food businesses, we would be by diverting so much more produce from going to waste streams.”

In their new model, recovered produce will be sorted and stabilized—for example by freezing—for sale to food businesses like caterers, juicers, and restaurants. One yet-unnamed “major baby food company,” she told me, is “super interested in the possibility of building out a dedicated product line made from our recovered produce.”

Wong and Feker share space with another Oakland-based startup called Imperfect, which aims to create the first national brand of ugly produce. A major step in that direction was recently taken in the form of a pilot project called Real Good. On July 11, ten outlets of the Sacramento-based supermarket chain Raley’s began selling cosmetically-challenged produce at a discount. If it goes well, they hope to expand the program to all 127 Raley’s stores, Imperfect co-founder and CEO Ben Simon explained. Ultimately, they want their Imperfect produce in every store, nationwide.

New ways of dealing with the massive amounts of excess food which exacerbates drought and climate change.

Ron Clark is no stranger to food waste. After more than 20 years of working to supply fresh produce to California’s food banks, he knows every point along the route from farm to table where produce gets plucked from the human food chain, for cosmetic reasons, and composted, fed to pigs, or buried in a landfill. Clark was filling 60-80 truckloads per week with recovered food, bringing 125 million pounds of perfectly healthy produce to hungry food bank clients, by the time he left the food bank system. Today he looks on in awe at a new wave of innovators looking to tackle the problem of food waste. Most of them are 20-somethings fresh out of college, he told me. And they’re using business models, rather than nonprofits, to get it done.

An estimated 40 percent of all food grown never gets eaten by humans, and hunger isn’t the only consequence. Wasted food also represents wasted water, and contributes to global warming, thanks to the methane produced when it rots in the landfill.

But the movement to stop food waste is booming. In 2014, one of the France’s largest food retailers, Intermarche, began selling “ugly” produce at a discount. Store traffic increased 24 percent. In mid-July a petition was initiated at Change.org calling on Wal-Mart and Whole Foods to do the same. At press time nearly 8,000 people had signed on to the petition, which was put forth by Jordan Figueiredo of Endfoodwaste.org. Figueiredo, whose day job as a municipal solid waste manager in the Bay Area, is an anomaly in the movement, both because of his advanced age—36—and because his web page is a nonprofit.

Many, if not most, of the newer efforts to end food waste are just as mission-driven as a food bank, but are sustained by sales of recovered produce, and products made from it, rather than grants and donations. And they are run by kids.

“It really is a millennial movement. It’s so refreshing to see a whole generation of people so passionate and excited about this issue,” Clark told me. And he’s impressed by their ability to bring in dollars, from sales and investors. “They’re money magnets,” he said.

“They aren’t interested in old organizations, which tend to be hierarchical and structured, like corporations. The energy in the new generation doesn’t mix with that culture. They’re going after the food waste issue in different ways, and for slightly different reasons. The millennials certainly care deeply about hunger, but are primarily concerned with saving the planet.”

Wasted food is responsible for about 45 trillion gallons of wasted water, according to 22 year-old Evan Lutz, CEO of Hungry Harvest in Baltimore. Hungry Harvest recovers surplus produce from farms and wholesalers, and sells it in CSA-style boxes at a steep discount to what non-cosmetically-challenged produce would cost. For each box sold, a healthy meal is donated to someone in need. Lutz sees his work as an inevitable result of a profoundly unsustainable situation.

“Our society can’t sustain itself when 6 billion pounds of produce is wasted annually, while 51 million Americans are food-insecure,” he told me.

And despite his lofty ambitions, Lutz has no reservations about turning a profit on his work. “We are for-profit so we can scale in a sustainable way.” Hungry Harvest recently secured some investments that “exceeded our expectations,” Lutz says.

When speaking with these young, business-savvy entrepreneurs, you hear a lot of economic jargon, like “scaling,” “aggregate,” and “resource constrained.” You also hear words like “shocked, aghast, insane, and disgusted,” as they recount their first glimpse of the enormity of the food waste problem.

“It’s appalling. It’s insane. It makes you want to do something about it,” recalls Claire Cummings, 25, of her first farm-level glimpse of food waste. Cummings is the Waste Specialist for Bon Appetit Management Company, a national restaurant company that operates more than 650 cafes in 33 states. The Waste Specialist position was created for Cummings, who was fresh out of Bon Appetit’s fellowship program. In partnership with Compass Group, the parent company, she quickly spearheaded the campaign called Imperfectly Delicious Produce, which searches for ways to recover cosmetically challenged produce that would otherwise have been wasted, and get it into the hands of its chefs. Just a year in, the program has been implemented in 10 states. And the plan is to bring recovered produce to all of their accounts, Cummings told me.

“We are not exclusively going after foods that already have a secondary market, such as tomatoes or lemons for juice,” she told me. “We are looking at the food that is truly getting wasted. ”

With the funding and organizational clout of a major corporation behind her, Cummings has made impressive strides. And while there are definitely cost savings in going this route—they average about 38 percent, she says—that isn’t why they are doing it. “We are driven by the desire to put money back in the pockets of farmers and save this perfectly good produce from going to waste.” Nonetheless, those favorable economics are nonetheless an important part of why such a diversity of new food recovery startups are flourishing.

On the other coast, a Bay Area start-up called Revive Foods began making jam out of recovered produce about a year ago. Co-founder Zoe Wong came from a nonprofit background, where, she says, "I felt frustrated constantly having to rely on donations in the nonprofit world and wanted to have the ability to be financially sustainable so I could get stuff done."

The business was going well, but she and co-founder Kay Feker weren’t satisfied.

“We realized that remaining a consumer product food business was going to be tough to scale from an impact perspective,” Wong told me. “By pivoting to focus on selling recovered produce to food businesses, we would be by diverting so much more produce from going to waste streams.”

In their new model, recovered produce will be sorted and stabilized—for example by freezing—for sale to food businesses like caterers, juicers, and restaurants. One yet-unnamed “major baby food company,” she told me, is “super interested in the possibility of building out a dedicated product line made from our recovered produce.”

Wong and Feker share space with another Oakland-based startup called Imperfect, which aims to create the first national brand of ugly produce. A major step in that direction was recently taken in the form of a pilot project called Real Good. On July 11, ten outlets of the Sacramento-based supermarket chain Raley’s began selling cosmetically-challenged produce at a discount. If it goes well, they hope to expand the program to all 127 Raley’s stores, Imperfect co-founder and CEO Ben Simon explained. Ultimately, they want their Imperfect produce in every store, nationwide.

And Fox finds new ways to blame blacks for cops' poor decisions to shoot them.

1. Fox News finds new ways to blame unarmed black men for their own deaths by cop.

All these videotapes of unarmed black men being executed by cops are really starting to grate on Fox Newsians. On Friday’s stellar discussion on “The Five,” Eric Bolling and Kimberly Guilfoyle had to struggle to find a way to blame the black guy again. They were forced to grudgingly admit that Samuel DuBose should not have been shot and killed by Cincinnati cop Ray Tensing.

“It’s tough because look, first of all it’s a tragedy,” Bolling ventured. “There’s another instance where someone had a missing front license plate and ends up dead.”

But still, Bolling really feels, “everyone is rushing this,” even the prosecutor. “I’m not defending this at all, but people have to realize you can’t resist arrest.”

So, actually he is defending it.

“This guy is taking off,” he continued. “I don’t think that cop was fearing for his life, so I think he’ll probably be found guilty, but stop resisting.”

Yes, unarmed black people, stop making cops shoot you.

Guilfoyle agreed that the people who put themselves in danger are to blame, rather than the ones doing the shooting.

“Time and time again, it always comes down to someone getting hurt, getting killed, by bad decisions by a cop,” Bolling said. “But those decisions wouldn’t have been made if the perp didn’t run away. Can you imagine what society would be like if everyone thought, if I just run away that cop can’t chase me? We’d be a lawless society.”

So, thank goodness, the Fox Newsians were able to preserve their world view of innocent cops forced to make bad decisions by unruly black people. It’s getting harder and harder.

2. Pres. Huckabee would stop abortions by any means necessary.

Mike Huckabee is nothing if not open-minded. One of the things he appears to be open-minded about is using the FBI or federal troops to prevent women from having abortions.

"I will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this," the Huckster told a reporter at a campaign stop in Iowa.

Reporter Matt Taibbi tweeted that when he asked Huckabee if he would send the National Guard to shut down abortion clinics, Huckabee replied: "We'll see if I get to be president," then added, "All American citizens should be protected."

By which he apparently does not mean women exercising their lawful rights or the doctors who help them.

3. Trump calmly explains he called a lawyer who was deposing him “disgusting” because “she wanted to pump breast milk in front of him.” That’s all. Now do you understand?

Another charming moment from Donald Trump’s past emerged this week from 2011, when a lawyer representing clients who wanted their deposits back for a failed real estate venture was deposing him.

When the time came for a lunch break, attorney Elizabeth Beck had planned on pumping breast milk for her infant. Trump decided he did not want to take a break and became furious when she mentioned the reason she needed a break.

“He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, ‘You’re disgusting, you’re disgusting,’ and he ran out of there,” Beck told CNN this week. She called the incident an “absolute meltdown.”

But Trump and his lawyer Alan Garten told CNN there was a perfectly good reason for that hissy fit. “She was disgusting,” Garten told CNN in a phone interview. “She was attempting to breast feed.”

Wow, that is disgusting. It appears that Trump and his lawyer have similar vocabularies. Also, doesn’t Elizabeth Beck know what breasts are for? They’re for augmenting and parading in a Miss Universe pageant bathing suit. Yeesh!

Donald Trump is very fond of Sarah Palin. Because, of course he is. Come to think of it, they make a pretty sweet political couple. They both spew an incredible amount of so-called patriotic bile, have limited vocabularies and share xenophobic world views. Palin even backed Trump up after his little dustup with Palin’s former benefactor John McCain. She said Trump is a “hero” too.

Sweet, right?

The Donald retuned the favor when he called Mama Grizzly a “really special person” this week, and suggested she might be someone he would tap for his cabinet.

Chew on that nightmarish scenario for a while.

Trump divulged this dandy little cabinet spoiler to the co-host of Sarah Palin’s radio show (yes, she has a radio show, because, of course she does. She has to get her message out now that Fox cut her loose). The host, Kevin Scholla, asked Trump whether he could see himself bringing Governor Palin “along in some capacity,” like “picking up the phone, giving [her] a call and picking her brain on some things.”

Sure, Trump responded, “I’d love that. Because she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person, she’s really a special person and I think people know that.” From there, he expanded the praise to “everyone loves Palin” because she is “smart” and “tough.” She’s just what the world needs now.

How wonderful would it be if Trump were to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate? If that does not bring Jon Stewart out of retirement, or spawn a thousand comic careers, nothing will. It’s gold-plated comedy gold on mega-steroids. We can’t even come up with enough superlatives for that. Trump can’t even come up with enough superlatives for that. No one can. That’s how golden it is.

5. Sarah Palin immediately proves just how “smart” and “tough” she is.

The idiot from Alaska demonstrated some of her Trump-approved “toughness” and “smartness” this week when she asserted that Planned Parenthood was deadlier to blacks than the Confederate Flag.

This truly awful woman espoused this view on her disturbingly popular Facebook page, which alas has 4.4 million likes.

The absurd and offensive meme puts Palin squarely in right-wing conspiracy nut Alex Jones territory. Insane kook Jomes claims that Planned Parenthood is a conspiracy to kill black babies, as if he might care (Actually, Sarah Palin is worse. The elevation of the Confederate Flag is her own unique touch.) Her war on Planned Parenthood, and the numerous life-saving health services it provides to women of all races puts her squarely in the mainstream of the Republican party.

6. Fox News Host Tantaros on the role of modern women.

Twenty-first century Fox Newisan Andrea Tantaros is nothing if not up-to-date in her views on modern women. She thoroughly enjoyed a recent Glamour magazine article which included tips on how to keep your man happy. And she was deeply disappointed when the magazine retracted the piece because—with tips like making your man a sandwich after sex, and getting him a beer when he comes out of the shower—it was not seen as very empowering to women. Actually, it was downright misogynist.

“Look at this list, it has great suggestions in here!” Tantaros said. “After you engage in a little horizontal hula, make him a sandwich. That’s not called 1950s. That’s called kindness. And frankly, I think women should do a little more of that.”

Yeah, you know. She’s right. What is wrong with that? More kindness, flowing from women to men is what the world needs now.

“What’s wrong with giving your man a brewski when he comes out of the shower?” Tantaros asked.

Comedian Ryan Reiss did not get that one. “Who needs a brewski out of the shower? What, are you dating Don Draper? What’s going on? I’ve never gotten out of the shower and been like, ‘I need to get drunk quick.'”

Co-host Stacey Dash jumped in to express some feminist solidarity with Tantaros.

“You don’t have the right woman. I think that’s why divorce rates are so high. Women don’t know how to take care of their men anymore.”

Also, wives should greet their husbands in lingerie, Tantaros said, or “maybe he’ll run off with the neighbor.”

That’s just what she calls “kindness.” You may have a different definition.

]]>
Sat, 01 Aug 2015 05:41:00 -0700Janet Allon, AlterNet1040235 at http://www.alternet.orgTea Party and the RightTea Party and the Rightdonald trumpsarah palinMike Hucakbee

And Fox finds new ways to blame blacks for cops' poor decisions to shoot them.

1. Fox News finds new ways to blame unarmed black men for their own deaths by cop.

All these videotapes of unarmed black men being executed by cops are really starting to grate on Fox Newsians. On Friday’s stellar discussion on “The Five,” Eric Bolling and Kimberly Guilfoyle had to struggle to find a way to blame the black guy again. They were forced to grudgingly admit that Samuel DuBose should not have been shot and killed by Cincinnati cop Ray Tensing.

“It’s tough because look, first of all it’s a tragedy,” Bolling ventured. “There’s another instance where someone had a missing front license plate and ends up dead.”

But still, Bolling really feels, “everyone is rushing this,” even the prosecutor. “I’m not defending this at all, but people have to realize you can’t resist arrest.”

So, actually he is defending it.

“This guy is taking off,” he continued. “I don’t think that cop was fearing for his life, so I think he’ll probably be found guilty, but stop resisting.”

Yes, unarmed black people, stop making cops shoot you.

Guilfoyle agreed that the people who put themselves in danger are to blame, rather than the ones doing the shooting.

“Time and time again, it always comes down to someone getting hurt, getting killed, by bad decisions by a cop,” Bolling said. “But those decisions wouldn’t have been made if the perp didn’t run away. Can you imagine what society would be like if everyone thought, if I just run away that cop can’t chase me? We’d be a lawless society.”

So, thank goodness, the Fox Newsians were able to preserve their world view of innocent cops forced to make bad decisions by unruly black people. It’s getting harder and harder.

2. Pres. Huckabee would stop abortions by any means necessary.

Mike Huckabee is nothing if not open-minded. One of the things he appears to be open-minded about is using the FBI or federal troops to prevent women from having abortions.

"I will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this," the Huckster told a reporter at a campaign stop in Iowa.

Reporter Matt Taibbi tweeted that when he asked Huckabee if he would send the National Guard to shut down abortion clinics, Huckabee replied: "We'll see if I get to be president," then added, "All American citizens should be protected."

By which he apparently does not mean women exercising their lawful rights or the doctors who help them.

3. Trump calmly explains he called a lawyer who was deposing him “disgusting” because “she wanted to pump breast milk in front of him.” That’s all. Now do you understand?

Another charming moment from Donald Trump’s past emerged this week from 2011, when a lawyer representing clients who wanted their deposits back for a failed real estate venture was deposing him.

When the time came for a lunch break, attorney Elizabeth Beck had planned on pumping breast milk for her infant. Trump decided he did not want to take a break and became furious when she mentioned the reason she needed a break.

“He got up, his face got red, he shook his finger at me and he screamed, ‘You’re disgusting, you’re disgusting,’ and he ran out of there,” Beck told CNN this week. She called the incident an “absolute meltdown.”

But Trump and his lawyer Alan Garten told CNN there was a perfectly good reason for that hissy fit. “She was disgusting,” Garten told CNN in a phone interview. “She was attempting to breast feed.”

Wow, that is disgusting. It appears that Trump and his lawyer have similar vocabularies. Also, doesn’t Elizabeth Beck know what breasts are for? They’re for augmenting and parading in a Miss Universe pageant bathing suit. Yeesh!

Donald Trump is very fond of Sarah Palin. Because, of course he is. Come to think of it, they make a pretty sweet political couple. They both spew an incredible amount of so-called patriotic bile, have limited vocabularies and share xenophobic world views. Palin even backed Trump up after his little dustup with Palin’s former benefactor John McCain. She said Trump is a “hero” too.

Sweet, right?

The Donald retuned the favor when he called Mama Grizzly a “really special person” this week, and suggested she might be someone he would tap for his cabinet.

Chew on that nightmarish scenario for a while.

Trump divulged this dandy little cabinet spoiler to the co-host of Sarah Palin’s radio show (yes, she has a radio show, because, of course she does. She has to get her message out now that Fox cut her loose). The host, Kevin Scholla, asked Trump whether he could see himself bringing Governor Palin “along in some capacity,” like “picking up the phone, giving [her] a call and picking her brain on some things.”

Sure, Trump responded, “I’d love that. Because she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person, she’s really a special person and I think people know that.” From there, he expanded the praise to “everyone loves Palin” because she is “smart” and “tough.” She’s just what the world needs now.

How wonderful would it be if Trump were to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate? If that does not bring Jon Stewart out of retirement, or spawn a thousand comic careers, nothing will. It’s gold-plated comedy gold on mega-steroids. We can’t even come up with enough superlatives for that. Trump can’t even come up with enough superlatives for that. No one can. That’s how golden it is.

5. Sarah Palin immediately proves just how “smart” and “tough” she is.

The idiot from Alaska demonstrated some of her Trump-approved “toughness” and “smartness” this week when she asserted that Planned Parenthood was deadlier to blacks than the Confederate Flag.

This truly awful woman espoused this view on her disturbingly popular Facebook page, which alas has 4.4 million likes.

The absurd and offensive meme puts Palin squarely in right-wing conspiracy nut Alex Jones territory. Insane kook Jomes claims that Planned Parenthood is a conspiracy to kill black babies, as if he might care (Actually, Sarah Palin is worse. The elevation of the Confederate Flag is her own unique touch.) Her war on Planned Parenthood, and the numerous life-saving health services it provides to women of all races puts her squarely in the mainstream of the Republican party.

6. Fox News Host Tantaros on the role of modern women.

Twenty-first century Fox Newisan Andrea Tantaros is nothing if not up-to-date in her views on modern women. She thoroughly enjoyed a recent Glamour magazine article which included tips on how to keep your man happy. And she was deeply disappointed when the magazine retracted the piece because—with tips like making your man a sandwich after sex, and getting him a beer when he comes out of the shower—it was not seen as very empowering to women. Actually, it was downright misogynist.

“Look at this list, it has great suggestions in here!” Tantaros said. “After you engage in a little horizontal hula, make him a sandwich. That’s not called 1950s. That’s called kindness. And frankly, I think women should do a little more of that.”

Yeah, you know. She’s right. What is wrong with that? More kindness, flowing from women to men is what the world needs now.

“What’s wrong with giving your man a brewski when he comes out of the shower?” Tantaros asked.

Comedian Ryan Reiss did not get that one. “Who needs a brewski out of the shower? What, are you dating Don Draper? What’s going on? I’ve never gotten out of the shower and been like, ‘I need to get drunk quick.'”

Co-host Stacey Dash jumped in to express some feminist solidarity with Tantaros.

“You don’t have the right woman. I think that’s why divorce rates are so high. Women don’t know how to take care of their men anymore.”

Also, wives should greet their husbands in lingerie, Tantaros said, or “maybe he’ll run off with the neighbor.”

That’s just what she calls “kindness.” You may have a different definition.

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is surging. In July, nearly 10,000 supporters gathered in Madison, Wis., to hear the 73-year-old socialist senator denounce the Koch brothers and corporate greed. Another 7,500 came to hear him in Portland, Maine. He fired up a crowd of 11,000 in Phoenix, Ariz.

More and more Americans are tuning in to the grumpy grandfather who never strays from his message and who rails against income inequality and the corruption of U.S. politics wrought by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Sanders comes across as stern and sincere, shaking a crooked finger as he insists that only a “political revolution” can save ordinary Americans from the predations of the “billionaire class.”

Sanders’ sudden popularity has surprised pundits trapped inside the Beltway, but not Vermonters closely acquainted with his political biography. They’ve watched his evolution from a fringe candidate of the far-left Liberty Union Party in the 1972 governor’s race, to mayor of the state’s largest city nine years later, to his current status as one of Vermont’s most popular politicians. Sanders won reelection to his U.S. Senate seat in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote.

Sanders-watchers say many of the attributes now becoming evident to voters outside Vermont are the same ones that have helped him assemble ever-broader majorities in the Green Mountain State over the last 35 years. A look at the factors behind his first electoral victory — as mayor of Burlington in 1981 — and his subsequent ascent to the national political scene in the 1990 race for Vermont’s sole U.S. House seat helps explain his growing appeal.

Underlying all of Sanders’ electoral successes is his ability to win the support of white working-class voters. Sanders’ friends, former campaign staff and academic analysts who have watched him over the decades agree on the elements that comprise his political repertoire: charisma, authenticity, trustworthiness, and simplicity and consistency of message. Sanders wins respect among moderates and even some conservatives, these sources add, by abstaining from ideology and by taking a pragmatic, but always principled, approach to governing and legislating.

“Bernie doesn’t talk in terminology laden with Marxist lingo,” says Terry Bouricius, a Burlington activist who helped Sanders achieve his upset mayoral breakthrough. “His socialism is more like liberation theology. He speaks about economic injustice as something ‘immoral,’ not as ‘the inevitable product of capitalism.’”

As a candidate who has lost six elections, Sanders has always displayed doggedness and “political fearlessness,” adds University of Vermont religion professor Richard Sugarman, Sanders’ longtime friend. Sanders is unintimidated by the forces arrayed against him, adds Erhard Mahnke, another Sanders ally who now lobbies for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. “People see that Bernie has a fighting spirit, that he means it when he says he’s on the side of vulnerable, low-income, ordinary Americans,” Mahnke observes. “He’s not packaged.”

Sanders has also been a beneficiary of sheer good luck, especially in the two pivotal races of his career.

‘Perfect Storm’

By 1980, Bernie Sanders had earned a reputation as a perennial loser at the ballot box. But University of Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson recalls that as the Reagan decade was dawning, “a perfect storm” was gathering in Burlington.

Sanders’ friend Sugarman felt the wind shift. He pointed out to his then-39-year-old friend and political soul mate that Burlington had been the source of Sanders’ highest vote percentages in the statewide races he had run in the 1970s as a Liberty Union candidate. Sanders, he suggested in 1980, should run for mayor against four-term Democratic mayor Gordon Paquette. “I told him he had a chance, a small chance, to actually win,” Sugarman recounts.

Burlingtonians had already assembled a progressive political infrastructure. Lawyer John Franco, another longtime Sanders confidante, points to a food co-op, a community health center and grassroots antipoverty groups such as People Acting for Change Together as local expressions of a movement rooted in the antiwar politics of the Vietnam era.

Many residents involved in those causes were also mobilizing in 1981 behind a ballot item calling for a freeze on nuclear weapons deployment. About 1,500 Burlingtonians had signed a petition to put the freeze referendum on the same ballot topped by the Paquette vs. Sanders contest, notes veteran peace campaigner and assistant city attorney Gene Bergman. That amounted to a significant show of strength, considering that Burlington’s population numbered roughly 38,000, and fewer than 9,000 voters would decide the outcomes of the election that year.

Sanders sympathizers were also galvanized by the election four months earlier of archconservative Ronald Reagan as president. “There was a strong feeling that there had to be a local response to that,” Mahnke says.

Paquette, a working-class Democrat who had compiled a partly liberal record, had meanwhile alienated big chunks of the electorate by calling for a steep rise in residential property taxes. And in what would become an incongruous characteristic of his socialist politics, Sanders was opposed to raising taxes.

In the run-up to the ’81 election, Paquette “managed to piss off tenants, the cops and firefighters,” political science prof Nelson notes, by failing to address the issue of rising rents and by opposing pay raises for members of the police and fire departments. Sanders supported those wage demands, again departing from left-wing orthodoxy — this time by refusing to view the police with suspicion, let alone outright animosity. Sanders would never adopt the ’60s leftist rhetoric of cops as “pigs.” He instead viewed them as “workers,” Sugarman points out.

The Burlington police union rewarded the Jewish socialist from Brooklyn — Sanders had moved to Vermont as a young man — by endorsing him for mayor of a mostly Catholic and WASP-y city. “That was the key to the race,” says Huck Gutman, Sanders’ friend of four decades, who would later serve as his chief of staff in the U.S. Senate. Bouricius, who would become one of Sanders’ two initial allies on the 13-member city council, agrees on the significance of that endorsement, saying, “It said to people that if the cops think Bernie is OK, he must be OK.”

The insurgent was simultaneously adding to Paquette’s political pain by portraying the mayor as a tool of real-estate interests seeking to build high-rise, high-priced condominiums downtown on scenic Lake Champlain. Sanders’ slogan of “the waterfront is not for sale” proved powerful, Sugarman says, because “the condos would not only have diminished the aesthetics but would have deprived people of an important piece of the city that many viewed as their backyard.”

But even with all these weather systems converging, Paquette might have survived the Sanders storm if he had seen it coming. “The Democrats didn’t pull out all the stops in that race,” recalls Bouricius, who has made a career of analyzing election reform. “They couldn’t imagine that someone like Bernie could actually win.”

A mano-a-mano bout might likewise have ended in a Paquette victory. But as luck would have it, Sanders benefited from a spoiler.

Richard Bove, a local restaurant owner and erstwhile ally of Paquette’s, had secured a spot on the mayoral ballot out of pique at a perceived slight by the local Democratic establishment, Nelson says. Bove got about 400 votes, and “all those votes would have gone to Paquette,” Nelson reckons. Instead, Sanders managed to squeak out a 10-vote victory.

The sort of political revolution Sanders is urging today actually occurred on a smaller scale in what soon became known as “the People’s Republic of Burlington.”

‘Champion of the Underdog’

Sanders became a hands-on mayor who practiced the principles of “Sewer Socialism.” In keeping with the precedent set by a series of progressive mayors of Milwaukee in the first half of the 20th century, he focused on effective and efficient delivery of basic municipal services. Voters also affirmed the radical mayor’s affordable-housing initiatives, as his three reelection victories would attest.

“He couldn’t be portrayed as a tax-and-spend liberal,” Mahnke says. “He was all about making government more efficient and more effective. For him, plowing the streets was a vital responsibility.”

Bitterly opposed by the city’s Democratic establishment, Sanders succeeded by attracting a set of bright staffers. They were fiercely dedicated to the causes championed by a mayor who was often irascible with staff behind the scenes.

He was soon looking to advance to higher offices. Sanders ran for governor in 1986 and the U.S. House in 1988 but lost both races.

His stage-left entry on the national political scene in 1990 — when he finally managed to win a statewide race — was made possible, in part, by his opponent’s blunders.

Incumbent Republican House member Peter Smith, who had beaten Sanders by four percentage points in a six-way race in 1988, alienated many conservative Vermonters, Nelson suggests, by insulting President George H.W. Bush and by casting a vote that caused the National Rifle Association to campaign against him.

Bush flew into Burlington in the fall of 1990 to help Smith stave off Sanders’ challenge. But the intended beneficiary of Bush’s benediction proceeded to criticize the president’s tax policy on the stage they were sharing.

Smith had also voted for a ban on assault weapons after pledging his allegiance to the NRA’s policy of opposing any and all gun-control measures. That spawned a negative ad campaign in hunter-friendly Vermont: “Smith & Wesson, Yes. Smith & Congress, No.”

Sanders won the election by a 16-point margin.

The Burlington mayor benefited from the statewide recognition he had gained from earlier unsuccessful runs for governor and the U.S. House, according to then-campaign adviser Franco. In 1988, Sanders, an independent, got twice as many votes as the Democratic U.S. House candidate. He had proven he was more viable than the mainstream liberal.

“It was the Democrat, not Bernie, who was seen as the potential spoiler in 1990,” Franco says. In 1990, Democrat Dolores Sandoval received just 3 percent of the vote.

From there, Sanders would go on to win seven more elections to the House and to score easy victories in races for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and 2012.

Throughout all of his campaigns, the once-obscure outsider never departed from his central themes of fighting economic inequality and calling for reforms that would benefit working-class Americans. Voters who seldom support liberal Democrats, let alone radical independents, have responded by standing with Sanders.

Franco doesn’t doubt anecdotal evidence that some Burlingtonians who voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 also cast ballots for Sanders. Similarly, Mahnke remembers seeing in the 2000 election campaign “Bernie for Congress” signs on many of the same lawns in the state’s remote and rural Northeast Kingdom that were also displaying “Take Back Vermont” posters signifying opposition to a controversial same-sex civil union law enacted earlier that year.

How could this be? Why would many anti-gay rights residents of Vermont’s poorest and most conservative region simultaneously support a socialist?

It isn’t as though Sanders sends coded signals on cultural and social issues hinting that he’s on the right’s side. His record in Congress gets a thumbs-up from groups focused on gender equality and freedom of sexual identity.

It’s that Sanders “doesn’t foreground those issues,” Gutman observes.

Nelson agrees, framing Sanders’ approach this way: “His politics are horizontal, not vertical. Bernie’s class-focused arguments cut across the usual racial and ethnic lines. He’s seen, first and foremost, as the champion of the underdog, and no part of the state is more of an underdog than the Northeast Kingdom.”

Veteran Politician

During his 25 years in Congress — by far the longest tenure of any independent — Sanders has raised his Brooklyn-accented voice to call for bank reform, a higher minimum wage and steeper taxes on wealthy Americans. But he has also fought hard for a group rarely associated with socialist views: military veterans.

Although he voted against the war in Iraq, Sanders chaired the Senate veterans’ affairs panel for two years — the first time, political science prof Nelson says, that an independent has headed a U.S. Congress committee. Throughout his full nine-year tenure on veterans affairs, he has worked to safeguard and improve federal services for former members of the U.S. armed forces, including health care delivered via the Veterans Administration. Sanders cites the VA’s coverage as a successful example of single-payer health insurance.

This involvement with vets is consistent with Sanders’ career-long advocacy for the interests of working-class Americans, Nelson notes. “Veterans are mostly working-class guys who depend on federal aid,” he says. “It’s a perfect cause for Bernie.”

That unwavering willingness to stick up for the little guy has won over plenty of conservative voters, Bouricius says. “I’ve got in-laws who always vote for Republicans — and for Bernie,” the former city councilor notes. “They say he’s their guy because he always speaks his mind.”

“He doesn’t do focus groups,” Mahnke adds. “He doesn’t raise his finger to see which way the political wind is blowing.”

In addition to avoiding leftist jargon, Sanders talks about down-home concerns that many radicals ignore. Sugarman says: “They’re into macro. Bernard is more about micro. He connects with people on the level of their lived experience — the quality of the schools their kids attend, for example.”

Above all, suggests Burlington activist and lawyer Sandy Baird, “Bernie doesn’t fight the cultural wars. He was never a hippie,” she points out. “He can attract working-class votes because he is working class. He’s from an immigrant family that didn’t have a lot, so it’s clear that he knows of what he speaks.”

Sanders has approached legislating in Congress the same way he handled administering a city — by presenting issues as moral choices to be made on behalf of, and with the support of, his constituents.

Today, he’s campaigning for the highest office of them all, having launched the Bernie for President drive on the Burlington waterfront, where condos were once proposed but which instead became a lakeside park.

Initially treated by national political savants as a figure for ridicule, Sanders has again shown that he can surprise those who underestimate him. As was the case 35 years ago in Burlington and 25 years ago in many parts of Vermont, big-dog Dems are saying Sanders has no chance of winning.

His growing crowds haven’t gotten the message yet.

This story was funded in part by Burlington, Vermont-based newsweekly Seven Days, which is chronicling Sen. Sanders' political career from 1972 to the present at BernieBeat.com. ]]>
Sat, 01 Aug 2015 10:46:00 -0700Kevin J. Kelley, Seven Days1040243 at http://www.alternet.orgNews & Politicsbernie sanders

The Vermont's Senator's unexpected journey.

Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign is surging. In July, nearly 10,000 supporters gathered in Madison, Wis., to hear the 73-year-old socialist senator denounce the Koch brothers and corporate greed. Another 7,500 came to hear him in Portland, Maine. He fired up a crowd of 11,000 in Phoenix, Ariz.

More and more Americans are tuning in to the grumpy grandfather who never strays from his message and who rails against income inequality and the corruption of U.S. politics wrought by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. Sanders comes across as stern and sincere, shaking a crooked finger as he insists that only a “political revolution” can save ordinary Americans from the predations of the “billionaire class.”

Sanders’ sudden popularity has surprised pundits trapped inside the Beltway, but not Vermonters closely acquainted with his political biography. They’ve watched his evolution from a fringe candidate of the far-left Liberty Union Party in the 1972 governor’s race, to mayor of the state’s largest city nine years later, to his current status as one of Vermont’s most popular politicians. Sanders won reelection to his U.S. Senate seat in 2012 with 71 percent of the vote.

Sanders-watchers say many of the attributes now becoming evident to voters outside Vermont are the same ones that have helped him assemble ever-broader majorities in the Green Mountain State over the last 35 years. A look at the factors behind his first electoral victory — as mayor of Burlington in 1981 — and his subsequent ascent to the national political scene in the 1990 race for Vermont’s sole U.S. House seat helps explain his growing appeal.

Underlying all of Sanders’ electoral successes is his ability to win the support of white working-class voters. Sanders’ friends, former campaign staff and academic analysts who have watched him over the decades agree on the elements that comprise his political repertoire: charisma, authenticity, trustworthiness, and simplicity and consistency of message. Sanders wins respect among moderates and even some conservatives, these sources add, by abstaining from ideology and by taking a pragmatic, but always principled, approach to governing and legislating.

“Bernie doesn’t talk in terminology laden with Marxist lingo,” says Terry Bouricius, a Burlington activist who helped Sanders achieve his upset mayoral breakthrough. “His socialism is more like liberation theology. He speaks about economic injustice as something ‘immoral,’ not as ‘the inevitable product of capitalism.’”

As a candidate who has lost six elections, Sanders has always displayed doggedness and “political fearlessness,” adds University of Vermont religion professor Richard Sugarman, Sanders’ longtime friend. Sanders is unintimidated by the forces arrayed against him, adds Erhard Mahnke, another Sanders ally who now lobbies for the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition. “People see that Bernie has a fighting spirit, that he means it when he says he’s on the side of vulnerable, low-income, ordinary Americans,” Mahnke observes. “He’s not packaged.”

Sanders has also been a beneficiary of sheer good luck, especially in the two pivotal races of his career.

‘Perfect Storm’

By 1980, Bernie Sanders had earned a reputation as a perennial loser at the ballot box. But University of Vermont political science professor Garrison Nelson recalls that as the Reagan decade was dawning, “a perfect storm” was gathering in Burlington.

Sanders’ friend Sugarman felt the wind shift. He pointed out to his then-39-year-old friend and political soul mate that Burlington had been the source of Sanders’ highest vote percentages in the statewide races he had run in the 1970s as a Liberty Union candidate. Sanders, he suggested in 1980, should run for mayor against four-term Democratic mayor Gordon Paquette. “I told him he had a chance, a small chance, to actually win,” Sugarman recounts.

Burlingtonians had already assembled a progressive political infrastructure. Lawyer John Franco, another longtime Sanders confidante, points to a food co-op, a community health center and grassroots antipoverty groups such as People Acting for Change Together as local expressions of a movement rooted in the antiwar politics of the Vietnam era.

Many residents involved in those causes were also mobilizing in 1981 behind a ballot item calling for a freeze on nuclear weapons deployment. About 1,500 Burlingtonians had signed a petition to put the freeze referendum on the same ballot topped by the Paquette vs. Sanders contest, notes veteran peace campaigner and assistant city attorney Gene Bergman. That amounted to a significant show of strength, considering that Burlington’s population numbered roughly 38,000, and fewer than 9,000 voters would decide the outcomes of the election that year.

Sanders sympathizers were also galvanized by the election four months earlier of archconservative Ronald Reagan as president. “There was a strong feeling that there had to be a local response to that,” Mahnke says.

Paquette, a working-class Democrat who had compiled a partly liberal record, had meanwhile alienated big chunks of the electorate by calling for a steep rise in residential property taxes. And in what would become an incongruous characteristic of his socialist politics, Sanders was opposed to raising taxes.

In the run-up to the ’81 election, Paquette “managed to piss off tenants, the cops and firefighters,” political science prof Nelson notes, by failing to address the issue of rising rents and by opposing pay raises for members of the police and fire departments. Sanders supported those wage demands, again departing from left-wing orthodoxy — this time by refusing to view the police with suspicion, let alone outright animosity. Sanders would never adopt the ’60s leftist rhetoric of cops as “pigs.” He instead viewed them as “workers,” Sugarman points out.

The Burlington police union rewarded the Jewish socialist from Brooklyn — Sanders had moved to Vermont as a young man — by endorsing him for mayor of a mostly Catholic and WASP-y city. “That was the key to the race,” says Huck Gutman, Sanders’ friend of four decades, who would later serve as his chief of staff in the U.S. Senate. Bouricius, who would become one of Sanders’ two initial allies on the 13-member city council, agrees on the significance of that endorsement, saying, “It said to people that if the cops think Bernie is OK, he must be OK.”

The insurgent was simultaneously adding to Paquette’s political pain by portraying the mayor as a tool of real-estate interests seeking to build high-rise, high-priced condominiums downtown on scenic Lake Champlain. Sanders’ slogan of “the waterfront is not for sale” proved powerful, Sugarman says, because “the condos would not only have diminished the aesthetics but would have deprived people of an important piece of the city that many viewed as their backyard.”

But even with all these weather systems converging, Paquette might have survived the Sanders storm if he had seen it coming. “The Democrats didn’t pull out all the stops in that race,” recalls Bouricius, who has made a career of analyzing election reform. “They couldn’t imagine that someone like Bernie could actually win.”

A mano-a-mano bout might likewise have ended in a Paquette victory. But as luck would have it, Sanders benefited from a spoiler.

Richard Bove, a local restaurant owner and erstwhile ally of Paquette’s, had secured a spot on the mayoral ballot out of pique at a perceived slight by the local Democratic establishment, Nelson says. Bove got about 400 votes, and “all those votes would have gone to Paquette,” Nelson reckons. Instead, Sanders managed to squeak out a 10-vote victory.

The sort of political revolution Sanders is urging today actually occurred on a smaller scale in what soon became known as “the People’s Republic of Burlington.”

‘Champion of the Underdog’

Sanders became a hands-on mayor who practiced the principles of “Sewer Socialism.” In keeping with the precedent set by a series of progressive mayors of Milwaukee in the first half of the 20th century, he focused on effective and efficient delivery of basic municipal services. Voters also affirmed the radical mayor’s affordable-housing initiatives, as his three reelection victories would attest.

“He couldn’t be portrayed as a tax-and-spend liberal,” Mahnke says. “He was all about making government more efficient and more effective. For him, plowing the streets was a vital responsibility.”

Bitterly opposed by the city’s Democratic establishment, Sanders succeeded by attracting a set of bright staffers. They were fiercely dedicated to the causes championed by a mayor who was often irascible with staff behind the scenes.

He was soon looking to advance to higher offices. Sanders ran for governor in 1986 and the U.S. House in 1988 but lost both races.

His stage-left entry on the national political scene in 1990 — when he finally managed to win a statewide race — was made possible, in part, by his opponent’s blunders.

Incumbent Republican House member Peter Smith, who had beaten Sanders by four percentage points in a six-way race in 1988, alienated many conservative Vermonters, Nelson suggests, by insulting President George H.W. Bush and by casting a vote that caused the National Rifle Association to campaign against him.

Bush flew into Burlington in the fall of 1990 to help Smith stave off Sanders’ challenge. But the intended beneficiary of Bush’s benediction proceeded to criticize the president’s tax policy on the stage they were sharing.

Smith had also voted for a ban on assault weapons after pledging his allegiance to the NRA’s policy of opposing any and all gun-control measures. That spawned a negative ad campaign in hunter-friendly Vermont: “Smith & Wesson, Yes. Smith & Congress, No.”

Sanders won the election by a 16-point margin.

The Burlington mayor benefited from the statewide recognition he had gained from earlier unsuccessful runs for governor and the U.S. House, according to then-campaign adviser Franco. In 1988, Sanders, an independent, got twice as many votes as the Democratic U.S. House candidate. He had proven he was more viable than the mainstream liberal.

“It was the Democrat, not Bernie, who was seen as the potential spoiler in 1990,” Franco says. In 1990, Democrat Dolores Sandoval received just 3 percent of the vote.

From there, Sanders would go on to win seven more elections to the House and to score easy victories in races for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and 2012.

Throughout all of his campaigns, the once-obscure outsider never departed from his central themes of fighting economic inequality and calling for reforms that would benefit working-class Americans. Voters who seldom support liberal Democrats, let alone radical independents, have responded by standing with Sanders.

Franco doesn’t doubt anecdotal evidence that some Burlingtonians who voted for Reagan in 1980 and 1984 also cast ballots for Sanders. Similarly, Mahnke remembers seeing in the 2000 election campaign “Bernie for Congress” signs on many of the same lawns in the state’s remote and rural Northeast Kingdom that were also displaying “Take Back Vermont” posters signifying opposition to a controversial same-sex civil union law enacted earlier that year.

How could this be? Why would many anti-gay rights residents of Vermont’s poorest and most conservative region simultaneously support a socialist?

It isn’t as though Sanders sends coded signals on cultural and social issues hinting that he’s on the right’s side. His record in Congress gets a thumbs-up from groups focused on gender equality and freedom of sexual identity.

It’s that Sanders “doesn’t foreground those issues,” Gutman observes.

Nelson agrees, framing Sanders’ approach this way: “His politics are horizontal, not vertical. Bernie’s class-focused arguments cut across the usual racial and ethnic lines. He’s seen, first and foremost, as the champion of the underdog, and no part of the state is more of an underdog than the Northeast Kingdom.”

Veteran Politician

During his 25 years in Congress — by far the longest tenure of any independent — Sanders has raised his Brooklyn-accented voice to call for bank reform, a higher minimum wage and steeper taxes on wealthy Americans. But he has also fought hard for a group rarely associated with socialist views: military veterans.

Although he voted against the war in Iraq, Sanders chaired the Senate veterans’ affairs panel for two years — the first time, political science prof Nelson says, that an independent has headed a U.S. Congress committee. Throughout his full nine-year tenure on veterans affairs, he has worked to safeguard and improve federal services for former members of the U.S. armed forces, including health care delivered via the Veterans Administration. Sanders cites the VA’s coverage as a successful example of single-payer health insurance.

This involvement with vets is consistent with Sanders’ career-long advocacy for the interests of working-class Americans, Nelson notes. “Veterans are mostly working-class guys who depend on federal aid,” he says. “It’s a perfect cause for Bernie.”

That unwavering willingness to stick up for the little guy has won over plenty of conservative voters, Bouricius says. “I’ve got in-laws who always vote for Republicans — and for Bernie,” the former city councilor notes. “They say he’s their guy because he always speaks his mind.”

“He doesn’t do focus groups,” Mahnke adds. “He doesn’t raise his finger to see which way the political wind is blowing.”

In addition to avoiding leftist jargon, Sanders talks about down-home concerns that many radicals ignore. Sugarman says: “They’re into macro. Bernard is more about micro. He connects with people on the level of their lived experience — the quality of the schools their kids attend, for example.”

Above all, suggests Burlington activist and lawyer Sandy Baird, “Bernie doesn’t fight the cultural wars. He was never a hippie,” she points out. “He can attract working-class votes because he is working class. He’s from an immigrant family that didn’t have a lot, so it’s clear that he knows of what he speaks.”

Sanders has approached legislating in Congress the same way he handled administering a city — by presenting issues as moral choices to be made on behalf of, and with the support of, his constituents.

Today, he’s campaigning for the highest office of them all, having launched the Bernie for President drive on the Burlington waterfront, where condos were once proposed but which instead became a lakeside park.

Initially treated by national political savants as a figure for ridicule, Sanders has again shown that he can surprise those who underestimate him. As was the case 35 years ago in Burlington and 25 years ago in many parts of Vermont, big-dog Dems are saying Sanders has no chance of winning.

His growing crowds haven’t gotten the message yet.

This story was funded in part by Burlington, Vermont-based newsweekly Seven Days, which is chronicling Sen. Sanders' political career from 1972 to the present at BernieBeat.com.
]]>
http://www.alternet.org/robert-reich-worker-pay-rising-slowest-rate-ever-recordedRobert Reich: Worker Pay Is Rising at the Slowest Rate Ever Recordedhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104651132/0/alternet~Robert-Reich-Worker-Pay-Is-Rising-at-the-Slowest-Rate-Ever-Recorded

Republicans have it completely backwards - higher wages can only help the overall economy.

Worker pay is rising at the slowest pace ever recorded. But it's worse than that because the new data include everyone who's paid -- including top CEOs and Wall Street moguls. The fact is, most people's pay is stagnant or dropping when adjusted for the costs of living, including rents that are going through the stratosphere.

Conservative Republicans like this. They've long said that Americans are living beyond their means and that the best way to revive the economy is for pay to drop. That's why they don't want to raise the minimum wage, why they advocate so-called "right-to-work" laws that destroy unions, why they're in favor of outsourcing jobs abroad through "free trade" policies like the Trans Pacific Partnership, and why they're happy for companies to shift from hiring people full time to relying on independent contractors and part-time workers.

But Republicans have it completely backwards. When pay stagnates or declines, people don't have the money to buy beyond necessities -- which causes the economy to slow, as it's been doing (the latest report showed the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the latest quarter, but the Commerce Department also marked down its growth numbers for prior years). Add to this the record share of workers who don't know how much they'll earn from week to week or even from day to day, because of the increasing reliance on part-time and independent contract work. That uncertainty is also holding back spending, which, in turn, retards the economy.

Repeat after me: Higher wages for middle and low-income workers are good for the economy. Lower wages are bad.

Republicans have it completely backwards - higher wages can only help the overall economy.

Worker pay is rising at the slowest pace ever recorded. But it's worse than that because the new data include everyone who's paid -- including top CEOs and Wall Street moguls. The fact is, most people's pay is stagnant or dropping when adjusted for the costs of living, including rents that are going through the stratosphere.

Conservative Republicans like this. They've long said that Americans are living beyond their means and that the best way to revive the economy is for pay to drop. That's why they don't want to raise the minimum wage, why they advocate so-called "right-to-work" laws that destroy unions, why they're in favor of outsourcing jobs abroad through "free trade" policies like the Trans Pacific Partnership, and why they're happy for companies to shift from hiring people full time to relying on independent contractors and part-time workers.

But Republicans have it completely backwards. When pay stagnates or declines, people don't have the money to buy beyond necessities -- which causes the economy to slow, as it's been doing (the latest report showed the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in the latest quarter, but the Commerce Department also marked down its growth numbers for prior years). Add to this the record share of workers who don't know how much they'll earn from week to week or even from day to day, because of the increasing reliance on part-time and independent contract work. That uncertainty is also holding back spending, which, in turn, retards the economy.

Repeat after me: Higher wages for middle and low-income workers are good for the economy. Lower wages are bad.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/scott-walker-pastier-trump-wisconsin-governors-ethno-nationalism-just-egregiousScott Walker Is a Pastier Trump: The Wisconsin Governor’s Ethno-Nationalism Is Just As Egregioushttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104651078/0/alternet~Scott-Walker-Is-a-Pastier-Trump-The-Wisconsin-Governor%e2%80%99s-EthnoNationalism-Is-Just-As-Egregious

He more likely to get elected -- and far more dangerous if he does.

A few days ago, the Daily Beast published an article by self-styled Reasonable Conservative Matt K. Lewis on “cuckservative,” a relatively new term of abuse that has recently set off some intramural sniping within the conservative movement. As Lewis rightly noted, the term is tribalist and racist. It’s also misogynist, paternalistic and xenophobic — the nasty consequence of racial panic and toxic masculinity, but in word form.

It wasn’t Lewis’s willingness to criticize a bunch of white supremacists, however, that made his piece interesting. (His response, in truth, was an unsympathetic mix of whining and unearned chest-puffery.) What made the column noteworthy instead was the way Lewis tried to load such ethno-nationalist sentiments — or “this white nationalism business,” as he put it — entirely on the shoulders of the cuckservative-slinging Republicans’ favorite candidate. A fellow by the name of Donald Trump.

Lewis granted that “these people have always been around.” But before Trump, he wrote, they were “confined to the nether regions of the Internet.” White ethno-nationalists only became significant members of the conservative crusade because “Twitter allows them to spread their pernicious message, and Trump has given them a candidate to get behind.” But apparently it wasn’t until 2015 that the movement behind the Southern Strategy, Willie Horton and Obamaphones started flirting with racists.

Much like comparing Trump’s supporters to Black Lives Matter, which Lewis did in a column for The Week, this is self-serving, dumb, and wrong. The modern conservative movement — the amorphous coalition of different kinds of angry white people that burst on the scene with Barry Goldwater in 1964, won the reins of power with Ronald Reagan in 1980, and reached its apotheosis by controlling all three branches of government with George W. Bush in 2004 — has always depended on racial resentment to be the solvent holding its business, religious and militarist wings together.

But rather than take a stroll back through recent American political history, how about we stick to the here-and-now? And rather than focus on Donald Trump, how about we concentrate on one of his more electable opponents? Because if Twitter and Donald Trump are to blame for the rise of white ethno-nationalists in the conservative movement, then how do we explain Gov. Scott Walker? Would Lewis say of Walker what he said of Trump? Is he, too, “not on [the conservatives’] team”?

If connecting Trump and Walker strikes you as odd, you probably don’t know very much about Wisconsin’s governor, who is currently sporting an approval rating of 41 percent. Walker’s name is usually associated with anti-unionism, and few could argue that he hasn’t earned the reputation. But along with turning Wisconsin into a “right-to-work” state — just like he promised a billionaire donor in 2011 — what’s defined Walker’s time in Madison has been a divisive and racially charged approach that has rendered the state’s politics “toxic and ruptured.”

Last summer, the New Republic published a superb profile of Walker by Alec MacGillis, one that looked at both his personal history and his political milieu. It would be impossible to give an adequate summary of the piece here, and you should really read it for yourself. But what I can say is that anyone familiar with the life and times of former GOP campaign consultant Lee Atwater will immediately recognize how Walker handles race; and anyone similarly well-versed on Karl Rove will understand his view of partisanship.

Perhaps the best way to quickly show how similar are devotees of Trump and Walker is to compare their rhetoric. Trump’s presidential campaign went from an oddity to a media sensation largely due to the truly odious things he saidabout undocumented immigrants during its launch. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” said Trump. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” These grotesque pronouncements lost Trump a lot of money in endorsements, but made him the darling of conservative ethno-nationalists.

If people drawn to rhetoric like this were marginal players in the pre-Trump conservative movement, as Lewis claims, then why is it that Walker’s staff, in their emails to one another, sound scarcely different? Via the TNR piece, here’s a summary of some of the worst moments:

One anonymous e-mail, forwarded by Walker’s then–chief of staff, went like this: “THE NIGHTMARE … ‘I can handle being a black, disabled, one armed, drug-addicted Jewish homosexual … but please, oh dear God, don’t make me a Democrat.’ ” Another compares welfare recipients to dogs: They are “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] Daddys [sic] are.” This message was forwarded around by Walker’s then–deputy chief of staff, who remarked that it was “hilarious” and “so true.”

And just in case anyone wonders if the Walkerites’ hatred only extended to African-Americans and Jews, there’s the story of Taylor Palmisano, the former campaign deputy finance director who was fired in 2013 for tweeting about “choking” Latinos — or, as she put it, “illegal mex [sic].” There’s also the story of Steven Krieser, another former Walkerite who, just a month before Palmisano’s ouster, was fired for ranting on Facebook about the “stream of wretched criminals” — by which he meant undocumented immigrants — who reminded him of no one so much as “Satan.”

Beyond offering an unpleasant view of some nasty people during some of their nastier moments, what these quotes show us is that the rise of white ethno-nationalism is not a new development for the conservative movement. These anti-cuckservative racists are not a heretofore unknown commodity in the conservative market. They are not an invasive species that, as Lewis puts it, is “polluting” the conservative movement’s “message.”

Lewis is right when he describes them as “vile goddamn racists,” no doubt. But if Scott Walker, the ultimate movement conservative, is “not on [the conservative] team,” as Lewis puts it, that raises a simple question: Who the hell is?

A few days ago, the Daily Beast published an article by self-styled Reasonable Conservative Matt K. Lewis on “cuckservative,” a relatively new term of abuse that has recently set off some intramural sniping within the conservative movement. As Lewis rightly noted, the term is tribalist and racist. It’s also misogynist, paternalistic and xenophobic — the nasty consequence of racial panic and toxic masculinity, but in word form.

It wasn’t Lewis’s willingness to criticize a bunch of white supremacists, however, that made his piece interesting. (His response, in truth, was an unsympathetic mix of whining and unearned chest-puffery.) What made the column noteworthy instead was the way Lewis tried to load such ethno-nationalist sentiments — or “this white nationalism business,” as he put it — entirely on the shoulders of the cuckservative-slinging Republicans’ favorite candidate. A fellow by the name of Donald Trump.

Lewis granted that “these people have always been around.” But before Trump, he wrote, they were “confined to the nether regions of the Internet.” White ethno-nationalists only became significant members of the conservative crusade because “Twitter allows them to spread their pernicious message, and Trump has given them a candidate to get behind.” But apparently it wasn’t until 2015 that the movement behind the Southern Strategy, Willie Horton and Obamaphones started flirting with racists.

Much like comparing Trump’s supporters to Black Lives Matter, which Lewis did in a column for The Week, this is self-serving, dumb, and wrong. The modern conservative movement — the amorphous coalition of different kinds of angry white people that burst on the scene with Barry Goldwater in 1964, won the reins of power with Ronald Reagan in 1980, and reached its apotheosis by controlling all three branches of government with George W. Bush in 2004 — has always depended on racial resentment to be the solvent holding its business, religious and militarist wings together.

But rather than take a stroll back through recent American political history, how about we stick to the here-and-now? And rather than focus on Donald Trump, how about we concentrate on one of his more electable opponents? Because if Twitter and Donald Trump are to blame for the rise of white ethno-nationalists in the conservative movement, then how do we explain Gov. Scott Walker? Would Lewis say of Walker what he said of Trump? Is he, too, “not on [the conservatives’] team”?

If connecting Trump and Walker strikes you as odd, you probably don’t know very much about Wisconsin’s governor, who is currently sporting an approval rating of 41 percent. Walker’s name is usually associated with anti-unionism, and few could argue that he hasn’t earned the reputation. But along with turning Wisconsin into a “right-to-work” state — just like he promised a billionaire donor in 2011 — what’s defined Walker’s time in Madison has been a divisive and racially charged approach that has rendered the state’s politics “toxic and ruptured.”

Last summer, the New Republic published a superb profile of Walker by Alec MacGillis, one that looked at both his personal history and his political milieu. It would be impossible to give an adequate summary of the piece here, and you should really read it for yourself. But what I can say is that anyone familiar with the life and times of former GOP campaign consultant Lee Atwater will immediately recognize how Walker handles race; and anyone similarly well-versed on Karl Rove will understand his view of partisanship.

Perhaps the best way to quickly show how similar are devotees of Trump and Walker is to compare their rhetoric. Trump’s presidential campaign went from an oddity to a media sensation largely due to the truly odious things he saidabout undocumented immigrants during its launch. “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” said Trump. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” These grotesque pronouncements lost Trump a lot of money in endorsements, but made him the darling of conservative ethno-nationalists.

If people drawn to rhetoric like this were marginal players in the pre-Trump conservative movement, as Lewis claims, then why is it that Walker’s staff, in their emails to one another, sound scarcely different? Via the TNR piece, here’s a summary of some of the worst moments:

One anonymous e-mail, forwarded by Walker’s then–chief of staff, went like this: “THE NIGHTMARE … ‘I can handle being a black, disabled, one armed, drug-addicted Jewish homosexual … but please, oh dear God, don’t make me a Democrat.’ ” Another compares welfare recipients to dogs: They are “mixed in color, unemployed, lazy, can’t speak English and have no frigging clue who the r [sic] Daddys [sic] are.” This message was forwarded around by Walker’s then–deputy chief of staff, who remarked that it was “hilarious” and “so true.”

And just in case anyone wonders if the Walkerites’ hatred only extended to African-Americans and Jews, there’s the story of Taylor Palmisano, the former campaign deputy finance director who was fired in 2013 for tweeting about “choking” Latinos — or, as she put it, “illegal mex [sic].” There’s also the story of Steven Krieser, another former Walkerite who, just a month before Palmisano’s ouster, was fired for ranting on Facebook about the “stream of wretched criminals” — by which he meant undocumented immigrants — who reminded him of no one so much as “Satan.”

Beyond offering an unpleasant view of some nasty people during some of their nastier moments, what these quotes show us is that the rise of white ethno-nationalism is not a new development for the conservative movement. These anti-cuckservative racists are not a heretofore unknown commodity in the conservative market. They are not an invasive species that, as Lewis puts it, is “polluting” the conservative movement’s “message.”

Lewis is right when he describes them as “vile goddamn racists,” no doubt. But if Scott Walker, the ultimate movement conservative, is “not on [the conservative] team,” as Lewis puts it, that raises a simple question: Who the hell is?

It’s a tale as old as time. Conservatives find themselves backed into a political corner, usually right before a contentious election season. In need of something to mobilize their anti-choice base, they launch an attack on reproductive health through another attempt to shut down the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The collateral damage: time, energy and resources spent responding to the attack, instead of focusing on the crisis of reproductive health care access in America.

It was just before the 2012 election that conservative Republicans made their last previous attempt at passing legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Now again, we can anticipate that legislation will be introduced in Congress to prevent any federal funds going to the country’s biggest provider of reproductive health care.

The old playbook is out again. Recently an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress, representing itself as a medical research firm, released secretly recorded, and heavily edited, videos of Planned Parenthood staff discussing fetal tissue donation, a service Planned Parenthood offers to its patients. Should they choose, someone who gets an abortion at Planned Parenthood can make the fetal tissue available for medical research purposes. Planned Parenthood denies any profit or wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, a court issued a temporary restraining order preventing The Center for Medical Progress from releasing videos featuring leaders of a California company that provides fetal tissue to researchers. Despite this, the attacks continue. The websites of Planned Parenthood, The National Network of Abortion Funds and the Abortion Care Network were hacked and shut down. A separate anti-abortion group, calling themselves “E,” took credit for hacking the nonprofits databases and gaining access to employee names and emails.

Though we all made this argument the last time Planned Parenthood was under attack, it bears repeating: Due to the Hyde Amendment, no federal funding can pay for abortions, except in the case of rape, incest and life endangerment. This, of course, includes any funding Planned Parenthood gets for contraception, cervical cancer screenings, and well-woman exams. Nonetheless, demonstrating no commitment to the facts, Texas Sen. John Cornyn falsely cited the Hyde Amendment as justification for passing an anti-abortion bill now under consideration in Senate, saying: “This legislation will bring Planned Parenthood in line with something that’s been the law since 1976.”

Instead of once again making the same arguments, playing into the conservative plan to focus on Planned Parenthood and change the conversation, this time let’s focus on a few reproductive health issues that ought to be in the news but aren’t:

2. Safety for women and children in immigration detention centers. This week a federal judge ruled that the detention of migrant children and their mothers is in breach of the law, and that the families should be released as soon as possible. Judge Dolly Gee issued a ruling, calling the conditions inside these detention centers “deplorable” and determined that Obama administration’s detention of children and their mothers is illegal and unjust. If those who assert their commitment to innocent lives, in fact cared about innocent lives, they would be picketing these detention centers where women and children are being held without being charged with a crime, subject to the horrific conditions of inadequate food, medicine and sanitation.

3. The horribly unjust and unconscionable Hyde Amendment, which prevents many low-income people from getting access to abortion coverage through health care, just because they are poor. May it’s overturn come soon and swiftly. While some are taking comfort in the fact that the Hyde Amendment is the law of the land, those of us that care about equality and economic justice should be fighting tooth and nail to overturn it. In fact, there’s new legislation, called the EACH Woman Act, that would do just that. We would do well to respond to these attacks against reproductive freedom by passing it.

Those of us, and there are many, who believe that these attacks against Planned Parenthood are disingenuous and troubling ought to be sure not to take our eyes off our goals, and off these important stories. We must refuse to get pulled into the smoke and mirrors show that anti-choice activists are using to distract us: many lives depend on it.

It’s a tale as old as time. Conservatives find themselves backed into a political corner, usually right before a contentious election season. In need of something to mobilize their anti-choice base, they launch an attack on reproductive health through another attempt to shut down the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The collateral damage: time, energy and resources spent responding to the attack, instead of focusing on the crisis of reproductive health care access in America.

It was just before the 2012 election that conservative Republicans made their last previous attempt at passing legislation to defund Planned Parenthood. Now again, we can anticipate that legislation will be introduced in Congress to prevent any federal funds going to the country’s biggest provider of reproductive health care.

The old playbook is out again. Recently an anti-abortion group called the Center for Medical Progress, representing itself as a medical research firm, released secretly recorded, and heavily edited, videos of Planned Parenthood staff discussing fetal tissue donation, a service Planned Parenthood offers to its patients. Should they choose, someone who gets an abortion at Planned Parenthood can make the fetal tissue available for medical research purposes. Planned Parenthood denies any profit or wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, a court issued a temporary restraining order preventing The Center for Medical Progress from releasing videos featuring leaders of a California company that provides fetal tissue to researchers. Despite this, the attacks continue. The websites of Planned Parenthood, The National Network of Abortion Funds and the Abortion Care Network were hacked and shut down. A separate anti-abortion group, calling themselves “E,” took credit for hacking the nonprofits databases and gaining access to employee names and emails.

Though we all made this argument the last time Planned Parenthood was under attack, it bears repeating: Due to the Hyde Amendment, no federal funding can pay for abortions, except in the case of rape, incest and life endangerment. This, of course, includes any funding Planned Parenthood gets for contraception, cervical cancer screenings, and well-woman exams. Nonetheless, demonstrating no commitment to the facts, Texas Sen. John Cornyn falsely cited the Hyde Amendment as justification for passing an anti-abortion bill now under consideration in Senate, saying: “This legislation will bring Planned Parenthood in line with something that’s been the law since 1976.”

Instead of once again making the same arguments, playing into the conservative plan to focus on Planned Parenthood and change the conversation, this time let’s focus on a few reproductive health issues that ought to be in the news but aren’t:

2. Safety for women and children in immigration detention centers. This week a federal judge ruled that the detention of migrant children and their mothers is in breach of the law, and that the families should be released as soon as possible. Judge Dolly Gee issued a ruling, calling the conditions inside these detention centers “deplorable” and determined that Obama administration’s detention of children and their mothers is illegal and unjust. If those who assert their commitment to innocent lives, in fact cared about innocent lives, they would be picketing these detention centers where women and children are being held without being charged with a crime, subject to the horrific conditions of inadequate food, medicine and sanitation.

3. The horribly unjust and unconscionable Hyde Amendment, which prevents many low-income people from getting access to abortion coverage through health care, just because they are poor. May it’s overturn come soon and swiftly. While some are taking comfort in the fact that the Hyde Amendment is the law of the land, those of us that care about equality and economic justice should be fighting tooth and nail to overturn it. In fact, there’s new legislation, called the EACH Woman Act, that would do just that. We would do well to respond to these attacks against reproductive freedom by passing it.

Those of us, and there are many, who believe that these attacks against Planned Parenthood are disingenuous and troubling ought to be sure not to take our eyes off our goals, and off these important stories. We must refuse to get pulled into the smoke and mirrors show that anti-choice activists are using to distract us: many lives depend on it.

British economist Tony Atkinson has been studying inequality — the gap in income and wealth between the top and the bottom — for nearly half a century. Now that the dogma of trickle-down has been exposed as myth, he sees economists, policy-makers and the public finally waking up to the seriousness of the problem. But how to fix it? In his new book, Inequality: What Can Be Done?Atkinson focuses on ambitious proposals that could shift the distribution of income in developed countries. This post was originally published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Lynn Parramore: When did you become interested in the topic of economic inequality? What sparked your work?

Tony Atkinson: My interest in the topic actually led me to become an economics student. There was a famous book in England called The Poor and the Poorest, which was the rediscovery of poverty in Britain, published in 1965. I then decided to write a book about poverty when I graduated, and it was published in 1969: Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security.

LP: In terms of finding solutions to inequality, Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, talks about a wealth tax, but many are skeptical that it could work. What is distinct about your prescriptions?

TA: It’s fair to say that Piketty’s book was not about solutions. He does refer to a global capital tax, but he was much more concerned with an analysis rather than a set of prescriptions. In a way, my book was really continuing the lines of recent discussions, that is to say, we’ve identified the problem and we’ve seen some of the reasons for it, and we’ve seen our political leaders and our religious leaders all saying this is a serious problem — a “defining challenge of our time” to quote your president. So the next question, of course, is, what are we going to do about it?

What I tried to do was to set out a range of measures, which were to some extent very familiar in terms of taxes and transfers. But I also tried to stress that this is only, at best, part of the solution. One has to think much more carefully about what determines incomes people get before the government intervenes in taxing and transferring.

LP: Some of the possible prescriptions you discuss, such as a basic income for all citizens, may sound radical, but you point out that they are actually already implemented as policy in many countries in various ways. Are ideas like basic income getting more attention and traction now?

TA: Definitely. A lot of people I’ve talked to about the book, in different places, say, Oh! I never knew we could do that kind of thing. It’s a tragedy, in a way, that our political system has become very narrowly focused and not willing to at least debate these ideas.

The basic income is very close to the idea Thomas Paine put forward in the 1790s. (Paine’s proposal, by the way, is on the website of the U.S. Social Security Administration.) That proposal is something that I and many others think is really interesting, which is that everyone, on reaching the age of 18 or so, should receive a capital payment. It would be like a negative capital tax. That idea was also proposed years ago in America by Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law at Yale.

A capital payment, or capital grant, would contribute to solving the problem of the intergenerational distribution of income, which is something I stress in the book. That is a serious problem, which I found, for example, in discussions with Korean journalists and economists. They are very worried about generational divide — concerned that the older people have benefitted from growth and the younger people are struggling to find jobs and so on. Some of the measures I propose are designed to take money away from my generation and give it to younger generations. The capital grant certainly would do that.

LP: You’ve been a strong critic of claims that we can’t afford to do much about inequality. How do you react to such claims?

TA: I think that the question about whether we can afford it has two dimensions. One is the extent to which addressing inequality involves redistribution —whether in involves some people, like myself, paying higher taxes to finance a more effective system of social protection, for example. On the other hand, it’s a question about how far these measures and other measures would tend to reduce the size of the cake, to put it in a rather hackneyed metaphor.

The second argument is the one I spend more time discussing, which is to say that in the kinds of economies in which we live, there are a number of directions in which we can both make the distribution fairer and contribute to making our economies more efficient and more productive for everyone. That’s very much within the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s way of looking at the world because I’m really saying that the economic model we’ve had to think about is one in which intervention tends to reduce the size of the cake. Yet if you think about a different economic model, you have to allow for the fact that there are corporations with monopoly power. You have to allow for the fact that we have workers who have very little countervailing power, and so on. There are, in fact, ways in which the current situation is inefficient.

LP: So reducing inequality may increase efficiency rather than the opposite, as neoclassical economists might argue?

TA: Yes, I think that as a starting point we need to look at the world as it really is. We have unemployment and other evidence that the world isn’t working in a kind of textbook competitive fashion.

LP: Let’s talk about debates concerning Britain and whether or not inequality is growing. Pikettty, for example, says that British society is becoming more economically unequal. Others refute this view. How do you read the data?

TA: I think it’s very important to distinguish here between distribution of incomes and distribution of wealth. On incomes, there’s very little dispute. There is no doubt that income inequality in Britain today is very significantly higher than it was a generation ago. The Gini coefficient, which is used to measure it, is some ten percentage points higher than it was in the 1970s. And that’s a very big increase. It took us from being a country like the Netherlands or France to being a country like the United States in terms of inequality. I don’t think anyone disputes that, nor do they dispute the fact that poverty is higher than when I started out as an economist nearly 50 years ago.

Where there is much less certainty is about the wealth data, that is, how rich people are. There, our current statistics about changes in wealthy inequality are not so good — not as good as the American statistics. I think there is room for confusion there. The OECD says that wealth concentration in Britain is rising. Maybe. I’m not myself quite sure. It’s much harder to measure wealth concentration now because people are so geographically mobile. People on the “rich list” — it’s not quite clear whether they live in England or not. They might live somewhere else. It’s not clear whether the wealth is owned by them, or by a foundation, or a trust, or whether it’s spread out amongst a family. So it’s a much more complicated set of statistics to assemble today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

LP: You’ve written in your book that you feel optimistic about solving the problem of inequality. What gives you hope?

TA: People often say that there’s a sense of inevitability, that there’s nothing much you can do. But what I was trying to argue in the book is that there are things you can do. The problem has been that we’ve not had on the agenda issues that would make a difference. Interestingly, even since I wrote the book the Conservative government in Britain has actually adopted the living wage as policy. Last week in the budget the chancellor announced he was in favor of paying higher wages. So there’s hope.

British economist Tony Atkinson has been studying inequality — the gap in income and wealth between the top and the bottom — for nearly half a century. Now that the dogma of trickle-down has been exposed as myth, he sees economists, policy-makers and the public finally waking up to the seriousness of the problem. But how to fix it? In his new book, Inequality: What Can Be Done?Atkinson focuses on ambitious proposals that could shift the distribution of income in developed countries. This post was originally published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

Lynn Parramore: When did you become interested in the topic of economic inequality? What sparked your work?

Tony Atkinson: My interest in the topic actually led me to become an economics student. There was a famous book in England called The Poor and the Poorest, which was the rediscovery of poverty in Britain, published in 1965. I then decided to write a book about poverty when I graduated, and it was published in 1969: Poverty in Britain and the Reform of Social Security.

LP: In terms of finding solutions to inequality, Thomas Piketty, in his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, talks about a wealth tax, but many are skeptical that it could work. What is distinct about your prescriptions?

TA: It’s fair to say that Piketty’s book was not about solutions. He does refer to a global capital tax, but he was much more concerned with an analysis rather than a set of prescriptions. In a way, my book was really continuing the lines of recent discussions, that is to say, we’ve identified the problem and we’ve seen some of the reasons for it, and we’ve seen our political leaders and our religious leaders all saying this is a serious problem — a “defining challenge of our time” to quote your president. So the next question, of course, is, what are we going to do about it?

What I tried to do was to set out a range of measures, which were to some extent very familiar in terms of taxes and transfers. But I also tried to stress that this is only, at best, part of the solution. One has to think much more carefully about what determines incomes people get before the government intervenes in taxing and transferring.

LP: Some of the possible prescriptions you discuss, such as a basic income for all citizens, may sound radical, but you point out that they are actually already implemented as policy in many countries in various ways. Are ideas like basic income getting more attention and traction now?

TA: Definitely. A lot of people I’ve talked to about the book, in different places, say, Oh! I never knew we could do that kind of thing. It’s a tragedy, in a way, that our political system has become very narrowly focused and not willing to at least debate these ideas.

The basic income is very close to the idea Thomas Paine put forward in the 1790s. (Paine’s proposal, by the way, is on the website of the U.S. Social Security Administration.) That proposal is something that I and many others think is really interesting, which is that everyone, on reaching the age of 18 or so, should receive a capital payment. It would be like a negative capital tax. That idea was also proposed years ago in America by Bruce Ackerman, a professor of law at Yale.

A capital payment, or capital grant, would contribute to solving the problem of the intergenerational distribution of income, which is something I stress in the book. That is a serious problem, which I found, for example, in discussions with Korean journalists and economists. They are very worried about generational divide — concerned that the older people have benefitted from growth and the younger people are struggling to find jobs and so on. Some of the measures I propose are designed to take money away from my generation and give it to younger generations. The capital grant certainly would do that.

LP: You’ve been a strong critic of claims that we can’t afford to do much about inequality. How do you react to such claims?

TA: I think that the question about whether we can afford it has two dimensions. One is the extent to which addressing inequality involves redistribution —whether in involves some people, like myself, paying higher taxes to finance a more effective system of social protection, for example. On the other hand, it’s a question about how far these measures and other measures would tend to reduce the size of the cake, to put it in a rather hackneyed metaphor.

The second argument is the one I spend more time discussing, which is to say that in the kinds of economies in which we live, there are a number of directions in which we can both make the distribution fairer and contribute to making our economies more efficient and more productive for everyone. That’s very much within the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s way of looking at the world because I’m really saying that the economic model we’ve had to think about is one in which intervention tends to reduce the size of the cake. Yet if you think about a different economic model, you have to allow for the fact that there are corporations with monopoly power. You have to allow for the fact that we have workers who have very little countervailing power, and so on. There are, in fact, ways in which the current situation is inefficient.

LP: So reducing inequality may increase efficiency rather than the opposite, as neoclassical economists might argue?

TA: Yes, I think that as a starting point we need to look at the world as it really is. We have unemployment and other evidence that the world isn’t working in a kind of textbook competitive fashion.

LP: Let’s talk about debates concerning Britain and whether or not inequality is growing. Pikettty, for example, says that British society is becoming more economically unequal. Others refute this view. How do you read the data?

TA: I think it’s very important to distinguish here between distribution of incomes and distribution of wealth. On incomes, there’s very little dispute. There is no doubt that income inequality in Britain today is very significantly higher than it was a generation ago. The Gini coefficient, which is used to measure it, is some ten percentage points higher than it was in the 1970s. And that’s a very big increase. It took us from being a country like the Netherlands or France to being a country like the United States in terms of inequality. I don’t think anyone disputes that, nor do they dispute the fact that poverty is higher than when I started out as an economist nearly 50 years ago.

Where there is much less certainty is about the wealth data, that is, how rich people are. There, our current statistics about changes in wealthy inequality are not so good — not as good as the American statistics. I think there is room for confusion there. The OECD says that wealth concentration in Britain is rising. Maybe. I’m not myself quite sure. It’s much harder to measure wealth concentration now because people are so geographically mobile. People on the “rich list” — it’s not quite clear whether they live in England or not. They might live somewhere else. It’s not clear whether the wealth is owned by them, or by a foundation, or a trust, or whether it’s spread out amongst a family. So it’s a much more complicated set of statistics to assemble today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

LP: You’ve written in your book that you feel optimistic about solving the problem of inequality. What gives you hope?

TA: People often say that there’s a sense of inevitability, that there’s nothing much you can do. But what I was trying to argue in the book is that there are things you can do. The problem has been that we’ve not had on the agenda issues that would make a difference. Interestingly, even since I wrote the book the Conservative government in Britain has actually adopted the living wage as policy. Last week in the budget the chancellor announced he was in favor of paying higher wages. So there’s hope.

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http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/reasons-why-group-sex-can-be-attractive-optionReasons Why Group Sex Can Be an Attractive Optionhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104578396/0/alternet~Reasons-Why-Group-Sex-Can-Be-an-Attractive-Option

Is group sex really as taboo as it seems?

Tradition holds that if we want to have sex, we’ve got to partner up. Once you find your mate, you can place A into B to create C. But what happens when you add someone to the party? And then another. And another, and another…

Group sex is one of those things that make some people go “hmm.” It’s seemingly taboo, kinky, and yet, spontaneously attractive. There’s a reason why PornHub’s “Orgy” category holds over 7,000 videos. Most of the collection consists of thrusting bodies, flapping genitalia, oily messes, tons of fingers... It’s pretty much what you’d expect out of a “group sex” setting. And while that description may leave some a bit scandalized, it piques the interest of others. And maybe they’re onto something. Maybe group sex isn’t so alien after all.

In her book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, sex therapist Susan Block details a standard sexual environment in the life of our “long-lost kissing cousins,” the Bonobo, writing, “Bonobo eroticism doesn’t discriminate between genders: all bonobos are, according to their fashion, bisexual or pansexual. Some bonobo sex is relatively private, but most is out in the open where others may watch or join in."

Block’s description of group sex in humans sets a similar tone. She told me over the phone, “Group sex is not artificial. It’s very natural. And group sex is not particular. ”She added, “I think there’s something in all of us that responds to this idea of ‘more than one.’”

She brought up the notion of “collective joy” and introduced an argument made by Barbara Ehenreich in her book Dancing in the Street. Elenreich suggests that sporting arenas, nightclubs and dance halls function as some of the few spaces society has designated to this idea of “collective joy.” According to Block, sex may very well have been one of channels through which our ancestors experienced the phenomenon.

But just because something once was doesn’t make it relevant today. Those who don’t buy the “maybe nature made us this way” hypothesis may lean on another to explain the drive for group sex: it’s fun, and fun things make you happy.

Block told me, “The couple unit is great. I’m all for the couple unit. I’m in a couple unit myself. 23 years of marriage. I’m very romantic about ‘the couple.’ And yet, it can be the most suffocating thing in the world, you know, to expect everything from one person. I mean, most of us are expected to meet all of our sexual and erotic needs within one relationship of marriage that is supposed to last our entire lives.”

She added, “And there’s nothing wrong with that, and mostly, that’s what we need to do to have a regular sex life. And it’s probably the most intimate form of sex. But, I think there is something very special and truly wonderful about communal ecstasy and opening up to the group that partnered sex just isn’t.”

“Just the smell. Just the intensity of people having sex around you is going to light up your libido. I can guarantee it.”

An online study conducted by the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality polled 1,092 swingers to better understand the demographic. Of those who reported being in an “unhappy relationship” before swinging, 90.4% said their relationship became happier after entering the lifestyle. The study also found that swingers were more likely to report being in a “happy marriage” than the non-swingers interviewed. (Though I should note, some “experts” remain weary of the argument that swinging can actually improve marital happiness).

Formal group sex settings take place often in specific venues. And these “social clubs” follow a certain set of rules. They serve as one of the rare spaces where women truly call the shots. Couples and single women are welcome to play around in all areas of the club. Single men – if allowed in – are given limited access. Block told me “Male aggression is very toned down, and females are encouraged to be assertive… The sheer amount of estrogen just keeps things very peaceful.” So long as you like group sex (and pussy) these places are where it's at. Just make sure you’ve talked through the logistics with your partner beforehand. A lot of clubs have sections devoted of “dealing with jealousy” listed under the rules.

When speaking with intimacy coach Rebekah Beneteau, she told me, “The idea that you can have what you want, that you can be the center of attention, that you can go after pleasure is somewhat alien in our society but I really think that that is a healthy kind of selfishness.”

Of course, no conversation of group sex would be complete without mention of voyeurism. Jones told me, “Speaking as man who’s had a fantasy of being with two women, voyeurism is definitely key. Very few men can keep up with two women who have a high sex drive. So at some point, you’re sitting back watching them. And that’s sort of the enjoyment. You get to see live what you’ve only fantasized about and watched in pornography.”

Beneteau added, "For a lot of women, what happens is once they start getting turned on, and they come once, the get revved up. They have a high need to keep coming. And having multiple guys means they can tag out when they get tired."

It's true; a lot of people would be hurt to see their partner having sex with another person. I’d probably fall into that category myself. But if you’re willing to enter into a group sex environment, there are some things you’ve got to understand. One is the idea of compersion.

Compersion is a concept frequently cited by those in the polyamorous community. The term refers to deriving pleasure from your partner’s pleasure. This experience can take different forms. Beneteau told me, “For us personally, if he’s been with somebody else, I like to hear about it. It turns me on. But we have to be naked. And we have to be fooling around”

That said, developing this idea of compersion isn’t easy for those of us who grew up under the umbrella of monogamy. If it’s not something you want to take on, don’t try it. To each their own.

If you are interested in dipping a toe into the group sex scene, however, don’t let fears about jealousy stop you. Block says, “A little bit of possessiveness is okay… But people that ride this wave of swinging or group sex or polyamory turn the jealously into compersion,” adding, “Jealously is a feeling of connectedness that goes bad. Compersion is a feeling of connectedness that blossoms into good feelings for you.”

Tradition holds that if we want to have sex, we’ve got to partner up. Once you find your mate, you can place A into B to create C. But what happens when you add someone to the party? And then another. And another, and another…

Group sex is one of those things that make some people go “hmm.” It’s seemingly taboo, kinky, and yet, spontaneously attractive. There’s a reason why PornHub’s “Orgy” category holds over 7,000 videos. Most of the collection consists of thrusting bodies, flapping genitalia, oily messes, tons of fingers... It’s pretty much what you’d expect out of a “group sex” setting. And while that description may leave some a bit scandalized, it piques the interest of others. And maybe they’re onto something. Maybe group sex isn’t so alien after all.

In her book, The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure, sex therapist Susan Block details a standard sexual environment in the life of our “long-lost kissing cousins,” the Bonobo, writing, “Bonobo eroticism doesn’t discriminate between genders: all bonobos are, according to their fashion, bisexual or pansexual. Some bonobo sex is relatively private, but most is out in the open where others may watch or join in."

Block’s description of group sex in humans sets a similar tone. She told me over the phone, “Group sex is not artificial. It’s very natural. And group sex is not particular. ”She added, “I think there’s something in all of us that responds to this idea of ‘more than one.’”

She brought up the notion of “collective joy” and introduced an argument made by Barbara Ehenreich in her book Dancing in the Street. Elenreich suggests that sporting arenas, nightclubs and dance halls function as some of the few spaces society has designated to this idea of “collective joy.” According to Block, sex may very well have been one of channels through which our ancestors experienced the phenomenon.

But just because something once was doesn’t make it relevant today. Those who don’t buy the “maybe nature made us this way” hypothesis may lean on another to explain the drive for group sex: it’s fun, and fun things make you happy.

Block told me, “The couple unit is great. I’m all for the couple unit. I’m in a couple unit myself. 23 years of marriage. I’m very romantic about ‘the couple.’ And yet, it can be the most suffocating thing in the world, you know, to expect everything from one person. I mean, most of us are expected to meet all of our sexual and erotic needs within one relationship of marriage that is supposed to last our entire lives.”

She added, “And there’s nothing wrong with that, and mostly, that’s what we need to do to have a regular sex life. And it’s probably the most intimate form of sex. But, I think there is something very special and truly wonderful about communal ecstasy and opening up to the group that partnered sex just isn’t.”

“Just the smell. Just the intensity of people having sex around you is going to light up your libido. I can guarantee it.”

An online study conducted by the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality polled 1,092 swingers to better understand the demographic. Of those who reported being in an “unhappy relationship” before swinging, 90.4% said their relationship became happier after entering the lifestyle. The study also found that swingers were more likely to report being in a “happy marriage” than the non-swingers interviewed. (Though I should note, some “experts” remain weary of the argument that swinging can actually improve marital happiness).

Formal group sex settings take place often in specific venues. And these “social clubs” follow a certain set of rules. They serve as one of the rare spaces where women truly call the shots. Couples and single women are welcome to play around in all areas of the club. Single men – if allowed in – are given limited access. Block told me “Male aggression is very toned down, and females are encouraged to be assertive… The sheer amount of estrogen just keeps things very peaceful.” So long as you like group sex (and pussy) these places are where it's at. Just make sure you’ve talked through the logistics with your partner beforehand. A lot of clubs have sections devoted of “dealing with jealousy” listed under the rules.

When speaking with intimacy coach Rebekah Beneteau, she told me, “The idea that you can have what you want, that you can be the center of attention, that you can go after pleasure is somewhat alien in our society but I really think that that is a healthy kind of selfishness.”

Of course, no conversation of group sex would be complete without mention of voyeurism. Jones told me, “Speaking as man who’s had a fantasy of being with two women, voyeurism is definitely key. Very few men can keep up with two women who have a high sex drive. So at some point, you’re sitting back watching them. And that’s sort of the enjoyment. You get to see live what you’ve only fantasized about and watched in pornography.”

Beneteau added, "For a lot of women, what happens is once they start getting turned on, and they come once, the get revved up. They have a high need to keep coming. And having multiple guys means they can tag out when they get tired."

It's true; a lot of people would be hurt to see their partner having sex with another person. I’d probably fall into that category myself. But if you’re willing to enter into a group sex environment, there are some things you’ve got to understand. One is the idea of compersion.

Compersion is a concept frequently cited by those in the polyamorous community. The term refers to deriving pleasure from your partner’s pleasure. This experience can take different forms. Beneteau told me, “For us personally, if he’s been with somebody else, I like to hear about it. It turns me on. But we have to be naked. And we have to be fooling around”

That said, developing this idea of compersion isn’t easy for those of us who grew up under the umbrella of monogamy. If it’s not something you want to take on, don’t try it. To each their own.

If you are interested in dipping a toe into the group sex scene, however, don’t let fears about jealousy stop you. Block says, “A little bit of possessiveness is okay… But people that ride this wave of swinging or group sex or polyamory turn the jealously into compersion,” adding, “Jealously is a feeling of connectedness that goes bad. Compersion is a feeling of connectedness that blossoms into good feelings for you.”

“All tricksters, other than magicians, depend to a great extent upon the fact that they are not known to be, or even suspected of being, tricksters. Therein lies their great advantage.” — John Mulholland

Magicians wield secrecy on the theater stage in the service of illusions. Spies likewise wield illusion on the world stage in the service of secrecy. So it is with the events behind the attacks of 9/11 where those who question the official story are derided as conspiracy theorists. Thanks to the investigative digging of reporter James Bamford, with the assistance of NSA whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the 9/11 crowd can now point to a conspiracy fact: an incredible cover-up that goes all the way to the top of the American intelligence community.

In a recent piece published by Foreign Policy Bamford examines a phone call to a clandestine operations center run by Osama bin Laden in Yemen during March of 2000. The phone call was dialed by one of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, from his apartment in San Diego. In fact, there were a number of such phone calls made by 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego. Why didn’t our security services immediately launch investigations?

According to then director of the NSA, Michael Hayden, the NSA was unable to determine the geographic origin of these calls despite the fact that the phone line in Yemen (967-1-200-578) was under intense scrutiny by NSA. The Yemen number was tracked using a form of surveillance known as “cast-iron” coverage where dedicated resources were allocated to continuously monitor the line 24/7.

Years later, in 2014, Hayden claimed that technical difficulties prevented exact geolocation. By the way, this is the same justification that he relied on post-9/11 to help institute the bulk collection program for phone metadata. Hayden told interviewers from Frontline: “Two guys, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, living in San Diego… come to the United States, call home, call Yemen, call a safe house in Yemen seven times. We intercepted every one of the calls, right?

Nothing in the physics of the intercept, nothing in the content of the call told us they were in San Diego. If we'd have had the metadata program, OK, if we'd have had that basket of stuff and that phone number of that safe house in Yemen, which we knew, and we would have walked up to that metadata and said, "Hey, any of you guys talked to this number in Yemen?" those numbers in San Diego would have popped up.”

James Bamford, himself a former NSA whistleblower, digs into Hayden’s assertions. Leveraging the technical expertise of former NSA insiders he unearths an unsettling find. The narrative spun by Hayden is “an absolute lie.” The NSA knew damn well that these calls were coming from San Diego. According to former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake: “Every number that comes into that switchboard, if you’re cast-iron coverage on that switchboard, you know exactly what that number is and where it comes from.… You know exactly—otherwise it can’t get there.”

Former NSA senior analyst Kirk Wiebe expounds on Drake’s counterpoint, noting that telephone communiques are bundled with the bits of information necessary to bill the correct phone company: “You know the phone numbers involved, who’s making the phone call, and who it’s going to because the billing system has to have that metadata to charge you.”

So Drake, Wiebe and other NSA veterans charge that Hayden is full of it. That the NSA was aware of terrorists in San Diego phoning home to Yemen. This raises some important questions. For example, how on earth could an intelligence agency with billions in resources neglect to follow up on these calls? From people whom they knew to be associated with bin Laden? How could internal security services not request court authorization for wiretaps and launch an inquiry? It’s a given that any investigator worth their salt would’ve linked and correlated the San Diego callers to other 9/11 terrorists in the United States and almost certainly put a halt to the operation.

There may be those who point to incompetence and embarrassment as a possible explanation. Such people would argue that the NSA is an agency like other agencies made up of people and that people are fallible; the San Diego call was somehow overlooked or was accidentally lost in the commotion of the NSA’s monolithic bureaucracy.

Your author questions this account, as it would indicate an organization that’s way beyond dysfunctional. Recent disclosures by WikiLeaks describe economic espionage by the United States which depict an NSA that’s more than capable of performing SIGINT missions. Other Snowden-era documents also indicate that the NSA runs a world class spy outfit. Consider also that foreign countries like Germany are just itching to be brought into the Five Eyes fold. No keystone cops here, no sir!

Precluding ineptitude leaves us with a more disturbing scenario. That the calls from San Diego were intentionally ignored. In other words certain people didn’t want them investigated. Thus raising even more disturbing questions. And from this point we must reluctantly travel down the rabbit hole. An entrance to a wilderness of mirrors, a placed defined by secrecy and illusion traveled heavily by the tricksters of the American Deep State.

“All tricksters, other than magicians, depend to a great extent upon the fact that they are not known to be, or even suspected of being, tricksters. Therein lies their great advantage.” — John Mulholland

Magicians wield secrecy on the theater stage in the service of illusions. Spies likewise wield illusion on the world stage in the service of secrecy. So it is with the events behind the attacks of 9/11 where those who question the official story are derided as conspiracy theorists. Thanks to the investigative digging of reporter James Bamford, with the assistance of NSA whistleblowers like Thomas Drake and Kirk Wiebe, the 9/11 crowd can now point to a conspiracy fact: an incredible cover-up that goes all the way to the top of the American intelligence community.

In a recent piece published by Foreign Policy Bamford examines a phone call to a clandestine operations center run by Osama bin Laden in Yemen during March of 2000. The phone call was dialed by one of the 9/11 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar, from his apartment in San Diego. In fact, there were a number of such phone calls made by 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego. Why didn’t our security services immediately launch investigations?

According to then director of the NSA, Michael Hayden, the NSA was unable to determine the geographic origin of these calls despite the fact that the phone line in Yemen (967-1-200-578) was under intense scrutiny by NSA. The Yemen number was tracked using a form of surveillance known as “cast-iron” coverage where dedicated resources were allocated to continuously monitor the line 24/7.

Years later, in 2014, Hayden claimed that technical difficulties prevented exact geolocation. By the way, this is the same justification that he relied on post-9/11 to help institute the bulk collection program for phone metadata. Hayden told interviewers from Frontline: “Two guys, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, living in San Diego… come to the United States, call home, call Yemen, call a safe house in Yemen seven times. We intercepted every one of the calls, right?

Nothing in the physics of the intercept, nothing in the content of the call told us they were in San Diego. If we'd have had the metadata program, OK, if we'd have had that basket of stuff and that phone number of that safe house in Yemen, which we knew, and we would have walked up to that metadata and said, "Hey, any of you guys talked to this number in Yemen?" those numbers in San Diego would have popped up.”

James Bamford, himself a former NSA whistleblower, digs into Hayden’s assertions. Leveraging the technical expertise of former NSA insiders he unearths an unsettling find. The narrative spun by Hayden is “an absolute lie.” The NSA knew damn well that these calls were coming from San Diego. According to former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake: “Every number that comes into that switchboard, if you’re cast-iron coverage on that switchboard, you know exactly what that number is and where it comes from.… You know exactly—otherwise it can’t get there.”

Former NSA senior analyst Kirk Wiebe expounds on Drake’s counterpoint, noting that telephone communiques are bundled with the bits of information necessary to bill the correct phone company: “You know the phone numbers involved, who’s making the phone call, and who it’s going to because the billing system has to have that metadata to charge you.”

So Drake, Wiebe and other NSA veterans charge that Hayden is full of it. That the NSA was aware of terrorists in San Diego phoning home to Yemen. This raises some important questions. For example, how on earth could an intelligence agency with billions in resources neglect to follow up on these calls? From people whom they knew to be associated with bin Laden? How could internal security services not request court authorization for wiretaps and launch an inquiry? It’s a given that any investigator worth their salt would’ve linked and correlated the San Diego callers to other 9/11 terrorists in the United States and almost certainly put a halt to the operation.

There may be those who point to incompetence and embarrassment as a possible explanation. Such people would argue that the NSA is an agency like other agencies made up of people and that people are fallible; the San Diego call was somehow overlooked or was accidentally lost in the commotion of the NSA’s monolithic bureaucracy.

Your author questions this account, as it would indicate an organization that’s way beyond dysfunctional. Recent disclosures by WikiLeaks describe economic espionage by the United States which depict an NSA that’s more than capable of performing SIGINT missions. Other Snowden-era documents also indicate that the NSA runs a world class spy outfit. Consider also that foreign countries like Germany are just itching to be brought into the Five Eyes fold. No keystone cops here, no sir!

Precluding ineptitude leaves us with a more disturbing scenario. That the calls from San Diego were intentionally ignored. In other words certain people didn’t want them investigated. Thus raising even more disturbing questions. And from this point we must reluctantly travel down the rabbit hole. An entrance to a wilderness of mirrors, a placed defined by secrecy and illusion traveled heavily by the tricksters of the American Deep State.

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http://www.alternet.org/secrets-extreme-religious-right-inside-frightening-world-christian-reconstructionismSecrets Of the Extreme Religious Right: Inside the Frightening World Of Christian Reconstructionismhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104578118/0/alternet~Secrets-Of-the-Extreme-Religious-Right-Inside-the-Frightening-World-Of-Christian-Reconstructionism

Be very afraid.

As an unprecedented shift in public opinion brought about the legalization of gay marriage, a vigorous counter-current has been intensifying under the banner of “religious freedom”—an incredibly slippery term.

Perhaps the most radical definition of such freedom comes out of the relatively obscure tradition of Christian Reconstructionism, the subject of a new book by religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstructionism. As Ingersoll explains, Reconstructionists basically reject the entire framework of secular political thought in which individual rights have meaning, so “freedom” as most Americans understand the term is not the issue at all. Indeed, they argue that such “freedom” is actually slavery—slavery to sin, that is.

Reconstructionists aim to establish a theocracy, though most would no doubt bristle at that description. They do not want to “take over the government” so much as they want to dismantle it. But the end result would be a social order based on biblical law—including all those Old Testament goodies like stoning gay people to death, while at the same time justifying “biblical slavery.” These extreme views are accurate, Ingersoll explained, but at the same time quite misleading in suggesting that Reconstructionism is a fringe movement with little influence on the culture.

‘If someone wants to understand these people, I think the smart thing to do is to take those really inflammatory things, acknowledge that they are there, and set them aside,” Ingersoll advised. “And then look at the stuff that’s less inflammatory, but therefore, I think, more important. I think the Christian schooling, homeschooling, creationism, the approach to economics, I think those kinds of things are far more important.

“The fights that we’re seeing right now over how religious freedom and constitutionally protected equality for the LGBT community, how those two things fit together—or don’t—that fight was presaged by theologian Rousas Rushdoony in the ’60s. He talked about that fight. Not particularly with regard to LGBT, but with regard to the expansion—it was civil rights. He didn’t say explicitly racially-based civil rights, but that’s what he was talking about in the era.”

As Ingersoll’s book explains, the influences she just mentioned are quite significant. But in order to understand them, and how they’ve succeeded, we need to understand the worldview they come out of. In the book, Ingersoll explains:

According to Rushdoony, biblical authority is God’s authority delegated to humans, who exercise dominion under God’s law in three distinct God-ordained institutions: the family, the church, and the civil government. Each of those institutions has carefully delineated and limited responsibilities. When humans decide that those institutions should serve any functions beyond the ones ordained by God, they presume the autonomy and supremacy of human reason and thus violate biblical law.

So, “tyranny” is violating that law, and the God-ordained “separation of powers” behind it, and “freedom” is opposite of “tyranny”—following the law. Understanding where this conception comes from, and where it leads to helps to shed a great deal of light on what Reconstructionists are up to, which in turn helps us begin to see the influence it has The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Christian Reconstruction is the term that many people may not be familiar with this. I’d like to begin by asking you to explain what it is.

This is a term that was given by Rushdoony to talk about this approach to Christian theology that focuses on reconstructing society in a way that overcomes the effects of the Fall. So, for these folks, God created Adam and Eve, put them in the Garden of Eden to have dominion. And the Fall interrupted that. With the Resurrection, people are restored to their original purpose. So the focus that he had was to set about a strategy for reconstructing the kingdom of God as it was intended to be, in the way that he understood it.

As you describe, three of the most significant aspects of Reconstructionists are pre-conceptualism, post-millennialism and theonomy. Could you explain these ideas for us and why they’re so significant?

Presuppositionalism, this comes from [theologian Cornelius] Van Til, and it basically says all knowledge starts with presuppositions. And those presuppositions – in Reconstructionist thought, there’s only two fundamental thoughts you can start with. One is you start with the revelation of God in the Bible, or you start with anything else – and “anything else” hangs together for them in the sense that if you don’t submit to God’s authority, then you are relying on your own reason, your own rationality to adjudicate right and wrong. For Reconstructionist, that goes right back to the Garden of Eden and eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil, and trying to know good and evil for themselves, and for them to label that is humanism. So “everything else” gets lumped into that category of humanism, because it is all, in their minds, a failure to submit to God’s authority, and to develop knowledge by relying on God’s revelation.

So, presuppositionalism is very important. It leads to the idea that there is no neutrality. You can’t have a secular sphere. Secularity is humanism. Secularity says, “Well, I’m not looking to God, to know whether this policy is the best one or not. I’m going to use quantifiable science through measurement, through rationality and maybe debate.” So it becomes really important for that reason. And that is areally important category for these people.

Post-millennialism and theonomy are kind of related, sometimes in the book I called them corollaries. So post-millennialism – Christianity is a tradition that posits there is a trajectory to history that leads to a culmination. Not all religions have that. In Hindoism, time is eternal and it just keeps getting reset. But Christianity has that idea. There’s a beginning of time; there’s a purpose to history; it has a trajectory – teleology is the theological term for it – and it ends somewhere. And so there’s long been Christian disagreement over how it ends.

One of the earliest versions is called premillennialism, and it says that Jesus will return before there’s the establishment of the kingdom of God on Earth. The dominant view that you see among conservative Protestants is version the premillennialist, but it dates only to the 19th century. We can get into the weeds on that, but it’s dispensationaliam. It’s the view of Hal Lindsay, and any movie that you see about the rapture, and Armageddon, and all that stuff. So it takes all those things that seem like prophecy in the Bible, it puts them off in the future, and expects the world to get worse and worse until Jesus returns.

Then there’s amillennialism, the passive view that most Catholics have. “Oh yeah, the Bible talks about the kingdom of God, but that’s in heaven. It’s not an earthly thing.” But the one that’s relevant to these folks, is perhaps one that the Puritans had—but there’s some debate over this—but this one says the kingdom of God was established at the Resurrection. Going back to that earlier thing about Genesis, so Adam and Eve left the garden and they couldn’t exercise dominion that God had created them for, and that went on for a while, until the Resurrection, that, in the view of Reconstructionists, restored humanity to its original purpose. And so that purpose is to build the kingdom of God on earth. And that is post-millennialism.

There is a second coming, but Jesus will return after Christians have filled the whole earth with good news, with the gospel. And for them, what it means is… for a lot of contemporary Christians, like preaching the gospel means going out and saying Jesus died for your sins, and people say the sinner’s prayer, and then they’re Christians But Reconstructionists are really critical of that idea. They think it starts there, perhaps, but that evangelism for them is really about teaching people to bring all of their lives under the Lordship, to make every aspect of life infused with the authority, wisdom, but a lot of the Bible. And that’s the autonomy. The way in which they establish the kingdom of God, as expected, to post-millennialists is through the application of biblical law, or theonomy.

That explains very well how post-millennialism and theonomy fit together. One thing that emerges in your book is how different their concept of freedom is from what’s commonly assumed in America today, and how the opposite of freedom is defined so differently as well – majority rule, and democracy as tyranny. This has emerged particularly in the rhetoric of “religious freedom” against gay marriage. So where does this concept of freedom come from and? And what does it entail?

That’s a good one. Some of that, at least philosophically or theologically, goes right back to that division between submission to the authority of God, and claiming authority for our own rationality. It goes right back there. So, for these Christians, the way they understand it, the only true freedom is freedom in submission to God. The thing that we might think of this freedom is actually conceived of as bondage to sin.. And in some ways, if you say were does that come from, it says that in the New Testament, right? That’s what Paul says. Paul is working with all of those inversions, to live is to suffer, and to die is gain. And the leaders are the servants, he inverts all kinds of categories in that way.

You also see some of this in the discussions about slavery. And there’s a good bit about that in the book. To me, this is one of the more interesting developments over the last decade. Because, on the one hand you do have this real minimization of the horrors of slavery, and the wrongness of slavery. You have people talking about, “It wasn’t so bad,” and “These are actually Christian families” and “People were well treated,” and “They were better treated than they were in Africa,” you get all that kind of stuff. So actual, literal slavery gets a little whitewashed if you pardon the word. Where actually being required by the federal government to fill out a tax form is considered involuntary servitude and slavery, and that’s appalling! So the other kinds of slavery are minimized, and their significance, and things with seem like – I don’t feel like going out tax forms any more than anyone else, but I don’t really think of it as actual slavery. But they talk about it that way.

By this definition, “freedom” ultimately has nothing at all to do with individual rights, or with the individual, period. And that suggests a completely different way of seeing the world, which brings me to my next question. In contrast to terms like “fundamentalism” and “modernism” you suggest a more profound grasp of what’s going on with Christian Reconstructionist them can be gotten via the terms of “maximalist” versus “minimalist.” Can you explain what this distinction is and how it helps us understand what’s going on?

I’m really glad you highlight that, actually. That division, that categorization comes from Bruce Lincoln, a scholar religion at the University of Chicago. Part of the problem with that fundamentalism/modernism division is it denies that fundamentalism is essentially modern. I mean, it’s really, really modern. When you look at how their fighting the battle between creationism and evolution, they turned creationism into science. They’re really really modern. Now, they are opposed to secular types of modernity, but they are not really opposed to modernity. And in many ways the crises of modernity are what give rise to specific answers they offer. Plus, I think that that division, the meaning of those terms changes from one context to the next. So I think they are really difficult words to use, at least with any scholarly accuracy. In everyday discourse it might work okay, particularly if you’re in a conversation with people who sort of share some understandings and assumptions. But then all of a sudden you have people who are trying to talk about fundamentalism as a global phenomenon, and that’s really problematic. I think.

But what Lincoln does, Lincoln says – and it’s still entangled with modernity – but he says that in modern period, we’ve compartmentalized life. And so, instead of having religion infuse every aspect of out lives, for the most part people who look at the world with modernist eyes think of parts of life as being religious or spiritual, and parts of life being scientific, and parts of it being rational.

So we might be really different persons at work than we are in our families, or that we might be in our churches or at our schools. And each of these realms has its own sets of rules, and we have our own understanding of our diverse identities within the spaces, And so people who are comfortable moving in that way, and who see most of life as secular, and then set off a severe specific sphere in which religion remains salient, as I was just saying, if you divide life in up into all these spears that have their own sources of authority, and rules and functions and ethics, your own identity varies between them. Then religion is off on its own, and its supreme in its own sphere, but it doesn’t infuse all of the others.

For Lincoln, that is minimalist. Religion has its own sphere, but its influence is limited, it’s minimal with regard to all of the others. So we, in the modern world, don’t necessarily think of work, for example, as religious. And this is part of what’s underneath the debate over where to draw the line in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage decision. So, if we’re going to have marriage exemptions, that allow people to even violate discrimination laws, on the basis of religion conviction, we’re going to have to say where the line is of what counts as religion. For those of us are minimalists, we say, “Oh, that’s easy, it’s church. Okay, well maybe it’s Christian schools.” But then you get these broader categories, where you’ve got hospitals, that have historic roots in religious traditions, but now use all kinds of public funds. Are they religious? Are they secular? A minimalist will say those are going to be secular, but a maximalist says no, everything is essentially religious, for a maximalist. So I think that framework is much more effective for thinking through these conflicts than trying to think in terms of fundamentalism.

One more point on that. You see the culmination of this in the Hobby Lobby case. For all intents and purposes, for most of us in America, this is a secular matter; there may be a religious overlay to it, but for them it’s not. It’s calling, it’s deeply infused with religion. But I don’t think it’s there just saying that. for the purpose of making a legal case to do something they want to do. I actually don’t think that. I think they really see it as infusing all of life, or at least as ought to be infusing all of life. They see themselves as seeking to infuse all of life with religion.

With all the above under our belt, we’re now in a position to ask about why the impact of Reconstructionism has not been widely recognized, when it is arguably one of the most coherent responses on behalf of maximalism. So, why is it?

Well, there’s a bunch of reasons. Some of the people don’t like to be identified with Reconstructionist but another reason is that the influence is unrecognized is because so much of what’s been written about them – and there’s real substantial exceptions, but up until recently so much of what was written was “Rushdoony advocates stoning of homosexuals,” so yeah, he did do that, but if all you’re going to do is take those really far out crazy things and just focus on those, you’re going to miss the real influence. Because culturally we’re moving, thankfully, in the other direction on LGBT rights. But when you look at the Reconstructionist’s world much more broadly, you see places where the influence is deep and profound. And It’s not so far out there that these things will never happen.

Reconstructionists have been arguing since the ’60s for the replacement of public education, with at first Christian schools, and then homeschools, for the privatization of public education, the dismantleing of public education, they believe that public education is unbiblical, and they want it to go away, and they’ve been writing this since the ’60s. And I don’t just mean they wrote the 60s left it there. They’ve been writing it consistently over and over and over again, through those decades, and I think that that’s a place where they are having a pretty powerful impact.

When Rushdoony started writing, there wasn’t a Christian school movement, there wasn’t a homeschool movement, and when those things got started, and parents run afoul of truancy laws in states that said your kids have to be in school – and then, of course, it says well, what counts as a school – Rushdoony was the expert witness in many of those cases that secured the right of parents to choose the education of their children that based on their religion, and in many places, with almost complete autonomy from the state.

So Christian schools and homeschools in many places are not regulated, they are not under any kind of supervision. He [Rushdoony] argued that that was a First Amendment fundamental freedom, for parents to be able to teach their children apart from any influernce of the federal government, or from state government, from civil government. And I think you see them having attained a level of success with regard to that goal, and I think the influence that permeating society.

I think the way in which the divide over evolution and creationism is greater now than it was 50 years ago. You would expect science over time to win out over creation mythology, and maybe it will, over time. But the fact that the American public has gone in the other direction with regard to that, I think that’s a result of particular version of creationism that has overtaken all the others, and that version is not only rooted in presuppostionalism, It was also initiated and popularized through a set of books that started with The Genesis Flood, that was going to be published by Moody, and when Moody bailed on the book, Rushdoony got it published trhough his publisher. So I’m not saying he’s responsible for it, it’s not all him. But he is a figure that was integral in that transformation in ways I don’t think gets written about, because people write about him wanting to execute homosexuals or any number of other extreme things, all that stuff.

Another area where Reconstructionists have been influential has been the revival of neo-Confederate ideology, and related views on race and slavery. What can you tell us about that?

There was a time that I would put Rushdoony’s Southern Presbyterianism, and views on racism and slavey, there was a time I would have put that in the same category as the category of executing gays and lesbians. I have, over the course writing the book, come to see the prevalent influence of Confederates Southern Presbyterianism, Southern Christianity, Southern ideology – you know, part of that comes from me being a Yankee from Maine, living in the South all these years – but the persistence of those perspectives I think also goes back not exclusively to Rushdoony, obviously, those ideas predate Rushdoony, they exist in all kinds of pockets in American culture.

But one of the pockets is the pocket were Rushdoony brought [19th Century pro-Confederate theologian Robert Lewis] Dabney back into the theological discourse among conservative reformed Christians. And I see that as the place [forming] this nexus with the Tea Party. You have to know a lot about Reconstructionism, and the got a know a good bit about Southern history, in order for that to ring off a bell, right? If you don’t know Rushdoony, when you read stuff about ‘oh legitimation of slavery,’ or let’s talk about equality this is really interesting.

Again, I’m a New Englander. So, I used to hear people talk about conservatives being opposed to equality, I just thought that was kind of liberal rhetoric, that liberals say things about conservatives, conservatives say things about liberals, that are just ideologically driven. So, liberals will say that conservatives are opposed to quality, but it never occurred to me that that was actually just a description, I thought that that was just an ideological charge, and that conservatives would answer back, “Well, yes we do, we mean something different by it.”

But actually, if you read Rushdoony carefully, there’s an argument there that dates right back to Dabney and the pre-Civil War stuff, that equality itself is not a value. That people aren’t equal. That people are different, and the law, that God ordained some of that difference. That’s Calvinism; that’s predestination. So people exist in the place in society were God has put them. And the idea that equality just on its own is a value, is really challenged by this particular worldview. And that goes right back to pre-Civil War thinking, and I see it all around me in Southern culture.

So there are ways in which Rushdoony is so far afield from any kind of public discourse that he be written off as just an extreme fringe person. There are other ways in which he is right in the center of a lot of what’s going on that you wouldn’t know unless you read him more deeply than people have largely read him.

The influence of neo-Confederate thought connects with the Tea Party, and another thing that also plays into that is Gary North’s work on biblical economics. So I wonder if you might speak to that as well?

Sure. Again I think this is another huge area of influence. No one ever writes about Reconstructionism and economics. They just don’t write about it. They write about family, they write about gender, they write about schools, but there’s not much about economics except for that guy, who is that his book is out now, McVicer, he’s done an intellectual history of Rushdoony, as his dissertation, and now published, it’s very good, and in the process of writing it, he wrote a couple of articles here and there, and there was one called “Libertarian Theocrats”, and it’s good, it was really good. [Available here.]

So, for Reconstructionists a whole a lot of everything comes down to property, and therefore economics is crucial. And for Reconstructionist, in that sphere sovereignty, that division of authority into family church and civil government, all economic activity is a function of the family. And so economics becomes a really important discipline for them—I mean like an academic discipline, the study of economics, it’s really important. And you’re right, like David Chilton did some work on economics, but Gary North has had a role to play for a really long time, you know—the early ties to Ron Paul [on his congressional staff in 1976] and libertarian economics.

North, I’ve heard him say, “Rothbard and those guys they really get biblical economics, they don’t understand that it comes from the Bible. So they fall down in humanism.” is how he says it. But the economic framework that they advocate is the biblical economic framework. So for North it’s because this is a function of family, and family authority is autonomous from the civil government’. And so that pairs very nicely with a libertarian view of economics that says the government should stay out of the economic choices, and economic decisions.

I think that they have also been broadly influential there, and obviously I don’t think that – the Tea Party isn’t even a thing, right? it’s a catchphrase, but it’s not some “Tea Party” that has a Chief Minister of Economics that went to ask about biblical law and imported that into the party, it’s much more fluid than that.

It’s a broad tendency…

Oh, it really is. And, you know the Tea Partiers from the beginning were always wanting to say, “We’re all about taxes. We’re all about taxes.” But I get Tea Party emails on a daily basis and they’ve all been about gay marriage lately, not about taxes, right? So even though they say that, one of the core groups that makes up this thing called the Tea Party is a group of conservative Christians. There are a lot of Tea Partiers who are opposed to creationism and, you know, atheists, and others who vary a lot ideologically from those I’m talking about here. But, for the conservative Christians who have climbed onto the Tea Party, the framework set forth by the Reconstructionists and promoted by Gary North…. the arguments that he made in the 1980s [in the book Honest Money, described in the book] are almost word for word what you hear Tea Partiers saying today. He’s been making these arguments, and I thinking that people read his Tea Party economy website. I also think it’s important with regard to the Tea Party, though, is the network of websites and email lists that Brandon Valeronie built, [connected to American Vision, another Reconstructionist organization described in the book].

What about gender? In the book you said that the patriarchal currents that Reconstuctionists are part of came about in response to Biblical feminism, they should be seen as a reaction. So could you talk a bit about Biblical femiism and then about the patriarchal response to that, which Reconstructionists are part of?

That’s a very broad category and a broad discussion in American conservative Protestantism, American religion, even. When it comes to patriarchal Christianity, I think most people assume, like the Christian Reconstructionists, that’s what the Bible teaches. It’s actually not as clear as it might seem. Actually the earliest example of what I would call Biblical feminism that I know of goes all the way back to the 1600s. There was a Quaker woman, Margaret Fell who wrote a treatise on women speaking [Women Speaking Justified].

But by the 60s and 70s, there was a whole spectrum of feminist viewpoints, and I mean spectrum I chose that word carefully, because there were biblical feminists who are really very conservative on every other aspect, and there were biblical feminists that even in the 70s were already fighting for LGBT rights, in fact you’ve got a split between two factions of Biblical feminist groups in like the 1980s, the Christians for Biblical Equality, and the Evangelical Women’s Caucus, which became the Evangelical & Ecumenical Women’s Caucus, EEWC. These women have argued, really for 50 years now, as long as Rushdoony had been writing, and I said these women but I really shouldn’t have, because they actually aren’t all women, there are male theologians, too, and arguing these things in places like Fuller Seminary, which is a relatively conservative institution, founded as a fundamentalist institution.

An example, there’s this passage, the line right before “all women should submit to their husbands,” it says “all Christians should submit to one another in Christ.” So it’s starts out saying everybody should submit… But then it says that husbands ought to love their wives, and no one thinks that that means that the reverse is not true, that wives should not also love their husbands, when it explicitly says that everyone should submit. So somehow the idea that men should submit to their wives in marriage gets thrown out the window. And these biblical feminists do that with every part of the texts that are used to demote women’s position.

Again, the earliest instance of this is back in the 1600s, but it became a really prominent viewpoint in the ’60s and ’70s, when it made its way subtly out into the church world and there were much more subtle understandings then you might have had in the 1950s, more subtle than the Reconstructionists might have had. So when somebody says, “But the Bible says…” it’s not always that clear. That’s what they been taught, but they forget that that’s an interpretation.

But right about in the early 1990s, there was a backlash in the most conservative wing of an evangelical fundamentalism, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood put out that book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Grudem and Piper were the authors of that, and that book argued that women were to be in submission to men, not just in marriage and the family, but in every aspect in society. So they said it was unbiblical for women to be in positions of authority in the work world where they had authority over men, so there was a substantial backlash against this Biblical feminism. I think that the Christian Reconstructionists/patriarchal biblical manhood/Quiverfull movement, they’re all sort of intersecting; they seem to me various names for different kinds of the same thing, although there are lots of people who argue they are subtly different.

Reconstructionists claim that they’re not political, and as you explain that’s true in a narrow sense, yet at the same time it’s misleading if not downright false from a broader perspective. Can you explain?

When they say they’re not political, they are relying on that three-part division… And for them politics means the civil government, so any battle over policy disagreement or things that you and I might consider to be political, if they don’t have to do with the civil government, Reconstructionists say they are not political. So you got a Baptist church committee voting whether to hire a woman pastor, that would seem to me a political choice, whether a woman should have that kind of position. For Reconstructionists that’s not political, that’s ecclesiastical.

So they are using a very narrow definition of politics. And I’m a little bit more inclined, with someone like Bourdieu, to see the political implications in all kinds of decisions. So my definition of politics is far broader than that of the Reconstructionists. And I think they did a couple of things with that. On one level, I think theologically, they actually mean that that’s what the political things are. I think they also use it to mollify their opponents.

You hear them saying this person or that person have misconstrued what we do, and advocated, and what we do isn’t political, it’s not top-down, it’s from the bottom up, it’s not to be imposed, right? But they stop there. They don’t then go on to really explain how it might work, if it’s not imposed. And I write about in the book, they say this will only come about in a society that would be overwhelmingly Christian. Well, even overwhelmingly Christian is not unanimously Christian. Then it’s still going to be imposed on some people. And they don’t really talk about that very much.

So, to some extent they use this definition of politics to divert criticism. And I see some people get confused – “Oh, okay, they’re not political” – and they think that that means they’re somehow not seeking to reshape every aspect of our world. And the fact that they say they’re not political does not come anywhere close to saying they’re not seeking to reshape our world, because they are.

As an unprecedented shift in public opinion brought about the legalization of gay marriage, a vigorous counter-current has been intensifying under the banner of “religious freedom”—an incredibly slippery term.

Perhaps the most radical definition of such freedom comes out of the relatively obscure tradition of Christian Reconstructionism, the subject of a new book by religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll, Building God’s Kingdom: Inside the World of Christian Reconstructionism. As Ingersoll explains, Reconstructionists basically reject the entire framework of secular political thought in which individual rights have meaning, so “freedom” as most Americans understand the term is not the issue at all. Indeed, they argue that such “freedom” is actually slavery—slavery to sin, that is.

Reconstructionists aim to establish a theocracy, though most would no doubt bristle at that description. They do not want to “take over the government” so much as they want to dismantle it. But the end result would be a social order based on biblical law—including all those Old Testament goodies like stoning gay people to death, while at the same time justifying “biblical slavery.” These extreme views are accurate, Ingersoll explained, but at the same time quite misleading in suggesting that Reconstructionism is a fringe movement with little influence on the culture.

‘If someone wants to understand these people, I think the smart thing to do is to take those really inflammatory things, acknowledge that they are there, and set them aside,” Ingersoll advised. “And then look at the stuff that’s less inflammatory, but therefore, I think, more important. I think the Christian schooling, homeschooling, creationism, the approach to economics, I think those kinds of things are far more important.

“The fights that we’re seeing right now over how religious freedom and constitutionally protected equality for the LGBT community, how those two things fit together—or don’t—that fight was presaged by theologian Rousas Rushdoony in the ’60s. He talked about that fight. Not particularly with regard to LGBT, but with regard to the expansion—it was civil rights. He didn’t say explicitly racially-based civil rights, but that’s what he was talking about in the era.”

As Ingersoll’s book explains, the influences she just mentioned are quite significant. But in order to understand them, and how they’ve succeeded, we need to understand the worldview they come out of. In the book, Ingersoll explains:

According to Rushdoony, biblical authority is God’s authority delegated to humans, who exercise dominion under God’s law in three distinct God-ordained institutions: the family, the church, and the civil government. Each of those institutions has carefully delineated and limited responsibilities. When humans decide that those institutions should serve any functions beyond the ones ordained by God, they presume the autonomy and supremacy of human reason and thus violate biblical law.

So, “tyranny” is violating that law, and the God-ordained “separation of powers” behind it, and “freedom” is opposite of “tyranny”—following the law. Understanding where this conception comes from, and where it leads to helps to shed a great deal of light on what Reconstructionists are up to, which in turn helps us begin to see the influence it has The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Christian Reconstruction is the term that many people may not be familiar with this. I’d like to begin by asking you to explain what it is.

This is a term that was given by Rushdoony to talk about this approach to Christian theology that focuses on reconstructing society in a way that overcomes the effects of the Fall. So, for these folks, God created Adam and Eve, put them in the Garden of Eden to have dominion. And the Fall interrupted that. With the Resurrection, people are restored to their original purpose. So the focus that he had was to set about a strategy for reconstructing the kingdom of God as it was intended to be, in the way that he understood it.

As you describe, three of the most significant aspects of Reconstructionists are pre-conceptualism, post-millennialism and theonomy. Could you explain these ideas for us and why they’re so significant?

Presuppositionalism, this comes from [theologian Cornelius] Van Til, and it basically says all knowledge starts with presuppositions. And those presuppositions – in Reconstructionist thought, there’s only two fundamental thoughts you can start with. One is you start with the revelation of God in the Bible, or you start with anything else – and “anything else” hangs together for them in the sense that if you don’t submit to God’s authority, then you are relying on your own reason, your own rationality to adjudicate right and wrong. For Reconstructionist, that goes right back to the Garden of Eden and eating the fruit of the tree of good and evil, and trying to know good and evil for themselves, and for them to label that is humanism. So “everything else” gets lumped into that category of humanism, because it is all, in their minds, a failure to submit to God’s authority, and to develop knowledge by relying on God’s revelation.

So, presuppositionalism is very important. It leads to the idea that there is no neutrality. You can’t have a secular sphere. Secularity is humanism. Secularity says, “Well, I’m not looking to God, to know whether this policy is the best one or not. I’m going to use quantifiable science through measurement, through rationality and maybe debate.” So it becomes really important for that reason. And that is areally important category for these people.

Post-millennialism and theonomy are kind of related, sometimes in the book I called them corollaries. So post-millennialism – Christianity is a tradition that posits there is a trajectory to history that leads to a culmination. Not all religions have that. In Hindoism, time is eternal and it just keeps getting reset. But Christianity has that idea. There’s a beginning of time; there’s a purpose to history; it has a trajectory – teleology is the theological term for it – and it ends somewhere. And so there’s long been Christian disagreement over how it ends.

One of the earliest versions is called premillennialism, and it says that Jesus will return before there’s the establishment of the kingdom of God on Earth. The dominant view that you see among conservative Protestants is version the premillennialist, but it dates only to the 19th century. We can get into the weeds on that, but it’s dispensationaliam. It’s the view of Hal Lindsay, and any movie that you see about the rapture, and Armageddon, and all that stuff. So it takes all those things that seem like prophecy in the Bible, it puts them off in the future, and expects the world to get worse and worse until Jesus returns.

Then there’s amillennialism, the passive view that most Catholics have. “Oh yeah, the Bible talks about the kingdom of God, but that’s in heaven. It’s not an earthly thing.” But the one that’s relevant to these folks, is perhaps one that the Puritans had—but there’s some debate over this—but this one says the kingdom of God was established at the Resurrection. Going back to that earlier thing about Genesis, so Adam and Eve left the garden and they couldn’t exercise dominion that God had created them for, and that went on for a while, until the Resurrection, that, in the view of Reconstructionists, restored humanity to its original purpose. And so that purpose is to build the kingdom of God on earth. And that is post-millennialism.

There is a second coming, but Jesus will return after Christians have filled the whole earth with good news, with the gospel. And for them, what it means is… for a lot of contemporary Christians, like preaching the gospel means going out and saying Jesus died for your sins, and people say the sinner’s prayer, and then they’re Christians But Reconstructionists are really critical of that idea. They think it starts there, perhaps, but that evangelism for them is really about teaching people to bring all of their lives under the Lordship, to make every aspect of life infused with the authority, wisdom, but a lot of the Bible. And that’s the autonomy. The way in which they establish the kingdom of God, as expected, to post-millennialists is through the application of biblical law, or theonomy.

That explains very well how post-millennialism and theonomy fit together. One thing that emerges in your book is how different their concept of freedom is from what’s commonly assumed in America today, and how the opposite of freedom is defined so differently as well – majority rule, and democracy as tyranny. This has emerged particularly in the rhetoric of “religious freedom” against gay marriage. So where does this concept of freedom come from and? And what does it entail?

That’s a good one. Some of that, at least philosophically or theologically, goes right back to that division between submission to the authority of God, and claiming authority for our own rationality. It goes right back there. So, for these Christians, the way they understand it, the only true freedom is freedom in submission to God. The thing that we might think of this freedom is actually conceived of as bondage to sin.. And in some ways, if you say were does that come from, it says that in the New Testament, right? That’s what Paul says. Paul is working with all of those inversions, to live is to suffer, and to die is gain. And the leaders are the servants, he inverts all kinds of categories in that way.

You also see some of this in the discussions about slavery. And there’s a good bit about that in the book. To me, this is one of the more interesting developments over the last decade. Because, on the one hand you do have this real minimization of the horrors of slavery, and the wrongness of slavery. You have people talking about, “It wasn’t so bad,” and “These are actually Christian families” and “People were well treated,” and “They were better treated than they were in Africa,” you get all that kind of stuff. So actual, literal slavery gets a little whitewashed if you pardon the word. Where actually being required by the federal government to fill out a tax form is considered involuntary servitude and slavery, and that’s appalling! So the other kinds of slavery are minimized, and their significance, and things with seem like – I don’t feel like going out tax forms any more than anyone else, but I don’t really think of it as actual slavery. But they talk about it that way.

By this definition, “freedom” ultimately has nothing at all to do with individual rights, or with the individual, period. And that suggests a completely different way of seeing the world, which brings me to my next question. In contrast to terms like “fundamentalism” and “modernism” you suggest a more profound grasp of what’s going on with Christian Reconstructionist them can be gotten via the terms of “maximalist” versus “minimalist.” Can you explain what this distinction is and how it helps us understand what’s going on?

I’m really glad you highlight that, actually. That division, that categorization comes from Bruce Lincoln, a scholar religion at the University of Chicago. Part of the problem with that fundamentalism/modernism division is it denies that fundamentalism is essentially modern. I mean, it’s really, really modern. When you look at how their fighting the battle between creationism and evolution, they turned creationism into science. They’re really really modern. Now, they are opposed to secular types of modernity, but they are not really opposed to modernity. And in many ways the crises of modernity are what give rise to specific answers they offer. Plus, I think that that division, the meaning of those terms changes from one context to the next. So I think they are really difficult words to use, at least with any scholarly accuracy. In everyday discourse it might work okay, particularly if you’re in a conversation with people who sort of share some understandings and assumptions. But then all of a sudden you have people who are trying to talk about fundamentalism as a global phenomenon, and that’s really problematic. I think.

But what Lincoln does, Lincoln says – and it’s still entangled with modernity – but he says that in modern period, we’ve compartmentalized life. And so, instead of having religion infuse every aspect of out lives, for the most part people who look at the world with modernist eyes think of parts of life as being religious or spiritual, and parts of life being scientific, and parts of it being rational.

So we might be really different persons at work than we are in our families, or that we might be in our churches or at our schools. And each of these realms has its own sets of rules, and we have our own understanding of our diverse identities within the spaces, And so people who are comfortable moving in that way, and who see most of life as secular, and then set off a severe specific sphere in which religion remains salient, as I was just saying, if you divide life in up into all these spears that have their own sources of authority, and rules and functions and ethics, your own identity varies between them. Then religion is off on its own, and its supreme in its own sphere, but it doesn’t infuse all of the others.

For Lincoln, that is minimalist. Religion has its own sphere, but its influence is limited, it’s minimal with regard to all of the others. So we, in the modern world, don’t necessarily think of work, for example, as religious. And this is part of what’s underneath the debate over where to draw the line in the wake of the Supreme Court’s marriage decision. So, if we’re going to have marriage exemptions, that allow people to even violate discrimination laws, on the basis of religion conviction, we’re going to have to say where the line is of what counts as religion. For those of us are minimalists, we say, “Oh, that’s easy, it’s church. Okay, well maybe it’s Christian schools.” But then you get these broader categories, where you’ve got hospitals, that have historic roots in religious traditions, but now use all kinds of public funds. Are they religious? Are they secular? A minimalist will say those are going to be secular, but a maximalist says no, everything is essentially religious, for a maximalist. So I think that framework is much more effective for thinking through these conflicts than trying to think in terms of fundamentalism.

One more point on that. You see the culmination of this in the Hobby Lobby case. For all intents and purposes, for most of us in America, this is a secular matter; there may be a religious overlay to it, but for them it’s not. It’s calling, it’s deeply infused with religion. But I don’t think it’s there just saying that. for the purpose of making a legal case to do something they want to do. I actually don’t think that. I think they really see it as infusing all of life, or at least as ought to be infusing all of life. They see themselves as seeking to infuse all of life with religion.

With all the above under our belt, we’re now in a position to ask about why the impact of Reconstructionism has not been widely recognized, when it is arguably one of the most coherent responses on behalf of maximalism. So, why is it?

Well, there’s a bunch of reasons. Some of the people don’t like to be identified with Reconstructionist but another reason is that the influence is unrecognized is because so much of what’s been written about them – and there’s real substantial exceptions, but up until recently so much of what was written was “Rushdoony advocates stoning of homosexuals,” so yeah, he did do that, but if all you’re going to do is take those really far out crazy things and just focus on those, you’re going to miss the real influence. Because culturally we’re moving, thankfully, in the other direction on LGBT rights. But when you look at the Reconstructionist’s world much more broadly, you see places where the influence is deep and profound. And It’s not so far out there that these things will never happen.

Reconstructionists have been arguing since the ’60s for the replacement of public education, with at first Christian schools, and then homeschools, for the privatization of public education, the dismantleing of public education, they believe that public education is unbiblical, and they want it to go away, and they’ve been writing this since the ’60s. And I don’t just mean they wrote the 60s left it there. They’ve been writing it consistently over and over and over again, through those decades, and I think that that’s a place where they are having a pretty powerful impact.

When Rushdoony started writing, there wasn’t a Christian school movement, there wasn’t a homeschool movement, and when those things got started, and parents run afoul of truancy laws in states that said your kids have to be in school – and then, of course, it says well, what counts as a school – Rushdoony was the expert witness in many of those cases that secured the right of parents to choose the education of their children that based on their religion, and in many places, with almost complete autonomy from the state.

So Christian schools and homeschools in many places are not regulated, they are not under any kind of supervision. He [Rushdoony] argued that that was a First Amendment fundamental freedom, for parents to be able to teach their children apart from any influernce of the federal government, or from state government, from civil government. And I think you see them having attained a level of success with regard to that goal, and I think the influence that permeating society.

I think the way in which the divide over evolution and creationism is greater now than it was 50 years ago. You would expect science over time to win out over creation mythology, and maybe it will, over time. But the fact that the American public has gone in the other direction with regard to that, I think that’s a result of particular version of creationism that has overtaken all the others, and that version is not only rooted in presuppostionalism, It was also initiated and popularized through a set of books that started with The Genesis Flood, that was going to be published by Moody, and when Moody bailed on the book, Rushdoony got it published trhough his publisher. So I’m not saying he’s responsible for it, it’s not all him. But he is a figure that was integral in that transformation in ways I don’t think gets written about, because people write about him wanting to execute homosexuals or any number of other extreme things, all that stuff.

Another area where Reconstructionists have been influential has been the revival of neo-Confederate ideology, and related views on race and slavery. What can you tell us about that?

There was a time that I would put Rushdoony’s Southern Presbyterianism, and views on racism and slavey, there was a time I would have put that in the same category as the category of executing gays and lesbians. I have, over the course writing the book, come to see the prevalent influence of Confederates Southern Presbyterianism, Southern Christianity, Southern ideology – you know, part of that comes from me being a Yankee from Maine, living in the South all these years – but the persistence of those perspectives I think also goes back not exclusively to Rushdoony, obviously, those ideas predate Rushdoony, they exist in all kinds of pockets in American culture.

But one of the pockets is the pocket were Rushdoony brought [19th Century pro-Confederate theologian Robert Lewis] Dabney back into the theological discourse among conservative reformed Christians. And I see that as the place [forming] this nexus with the Tea Party. You have to know a lot about Reconstructionism, and the got a know a good bit about Southern history, in order for that to ring off a bell, right? If you don’t know Rushdoony, when you read stuff about ‘oh legitimation of slavery,’ or let’s talk about equality this is really interesting.

Again, I’m a New Englander. So, I used to hear people talk about conservatives being opposed to equality, I just thought that was kind of liberal rhetoric, that liberals say things about conservatives, conservatives say things about liberals, that are just ideologically driven. So, liberals will say that conservatives are opposed to quality, but it never occurred to me that that was actually just a description, I thought that that was just an ideological charge, and that conservatives would answer back, “Well, yes we do, we mean something different by it.”

But actually, if you read Rushdoony carefully, there’s an argument there that dates right back to Dabney and the pre-Civil War stuff, that equality itself is not a value. That people aren’t equal. That people are different, and the law, that God ordained some of that difference. That’s Calvinism; that’s predestination. So people exist in the place in society were God has put them. And the idea that equality just on its own is a value, is really challenged by this particular worldview. And that goes right back to pre-Civil War thinking, and I see it all around me in Southern culture.

So there are ways in which Rushdoony is so far afield from any kind of public discourse that he be written off as just an extreme fringe person. There are other ways in which he is right in the center of a lot of what’s going on that you wouldn’t know unless you read him more deeply than people have largely read him.

The influence of neo-Confederate thought connects with the Tea Party, and another thing that also plays into that is Gary North’s work on biblical economics. So I wonder if you might speak to that as well?

Sure. Again I think this is another huge area of influence. No one ever writes about Reconstructionism and economics. They just don’t write about it. They write about family, they write about gender, they write about schools, but there’s not much about economics except for that guy, who is that his book is out now, McVicer, he’s done an intellectual history of Rushdoony, as his dissertation, and now published, it’s very good, and in the process of writing it, he wrote a couple of articles here and there, and there was one called “Libertarian Theocrats”, and it’s good, it was really good. [Available here.]

So, for Reconstructionists a whole a lot of everything comes down to property, and therefore economics is crucial. And for Reconstructionist, in that sphere sovereignty, that division of authority into family church and civil government, all economic activity is a function of the family. And so economics becomes a really important discipline for them—I mean like an academic discipline, the study of economics, it’s really important. And you’re right, like David Chilton did some work on economics, but Gary North has had a role to play for a really long time, you know—the early ties to Ron Paul [on his congressional staff in 1976] and libertarian economics.

North, I’ve heard him say, “Rothbard and those guys they really get biblical economics, they don’t understand that it comes from the Bible. So they fall down in humanism.” is how he says it. But the economic framework that they advocate is the biblical economic framework. So for North it’s because this is a function of family, and family authority is autonomous from the civil government’. And so that pairs very nicely with a libertarian view of economics that says the government should stay out of the economic choices, and economic decisions.

I think that they have also been broadly influential there, and obviously I don’t think that – the Tea Party isn’t even a thing, right? it’s a catchphrase, but it’s not some “Tea Party” that has a Chief Minister of Economics that went to ask about biblical law and imported that into the party, it’s much more fluid than that.

It’s a broad tendency…

Oh, it really is. And, you know the Tea Partiers from the beginning were always wanting to say, “We’re all about taxes. We’re all about taxes.” But I get Tea Party emails on a daily basis and they’ve all been about gay marriage lately, not about taxes, right? So even though they say that, one of the core groups that makes up this thing called the Tea Party is a group of conservative Christians. There are a lot of Tea Partiers who are opposed to creationism and, you know, atheists, and others who vary a lot ideologically from those I’m talking about here. But, for the conservative Christians who have climbed onto the Tea Party, the framework set forth by the Reconstructionists and promoted by Gary North…. the arguments that he made in the 1980s [in the book Honest Money, described in the book] are almost word for word what you hear Tea Partiers saying today. He’s been making these arguments, and I thinking that people read his Tea Party economy website. I also think it’s important with regard to the Tea Party, though, is the network of websites and email lists that Brandon Valeronie built, [connected to American Vision, another Reconstructionist organization described in the book].

What about gender? In the book you said that the patriarchal currents that Reconstuctionists are part of came about in response to Biblical feminism, they should be seen as a reaction. So could you talk a bit about Biblical femiism and then about the patriarchal response to that, which Reconstructionists are part of?

That’s a very broad category and a broad discussion in American conservative Protestantism, American religion, even. When it comes to patriarchal Christianity, I think most people assume, like the Christian Reconstructionists, that’s what the Bible teaches. It’s actually not as clear as it might seem. Actually the earliest example of what I would call Biblical feminism that I know of goes all the way back to the 1600s. There was a Quaker woman, Margaret Fell who wrote a treatise on women speaking [Women Speaking Justified].

But by the 60s and 70s, there was a whole spectrum of feminist viewpoints, and I mean spectrum I chose that word carefully, because there were biblical feminists who are really very conservative on every other aspect, and there were biblical feminists that even in the 70s were already fighting for LGBT rights, in fact you’ve got a split between two factions of Biblical feminist groups in like the 1980s, the Christians for Biblical Equality, and the Evangelical Women’s Caucus, which became the Evangelical & Ecumenical Women’s Caucus, EEWC. These women have argued, really for 50 years now, as long as Rushdoony had been writing, and I said these women but I really shouldn’t have, because they actually aren’t all women, there are male theologians, too, and arguing these things in places like Fuller Seminary, which is a relatively conservative institution, founded as a fundamentalist institution.

An example, there’s this passage, the line right before “all women should submit to their husbands,” it says “all Christians should submit to one another in Christ.” So it’s starts out saying everybody should submit… But then it says that husbands ought to love their wives, and no one thinks that that means that the reverse is not true, that wives should not also love their husbands, when it explicitly says that everyone should submit. So somehow the idea that men should submit to their wives in marriage gets thrown out the window. And these biblical feminists do that with every part of the texts that are used to demote women’s position.

Again, the earliest instance of this is back in the 1600s, but it became a really prominent viewpoint in the ’60s and ’70s, when it made its way subtly out into the church world and there were much more subtle understandings then you might have had in the 1950s, more subtle than the Reconstructionists might have had. So when somebody says, “But the Bible says…” it’s not always that clear. That’s what they been taught, but they forget that that’s an interpretation.

But right about in the early 1990s, there was a backlash in the most conservative wing of an evangelical fundamentalism, the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood put out that book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Grudem and Piper were the authors of that, and that book argued that women were to be in submission to men, not just in marriage and the family, but in every aspect in society. So they said it was unbiblical for women to be in positions of authority in the work world where they had authority over men, so there was a substantial backlash against this Biblical feminism. I think that the Christian Reconstructionists/patriarchal biblical manhood/Quiverfull movement, they’re all sort of intersecting; they seem to me various names for different kinds of the same thing, although there are lots of people who argue they are subtly different.

Reconstructionists claim that they’re not political, and as you explain that’s true in a narrow sense, yet at the same time it’s misleading if not downright false from a broader perspective. Can you explain?

When they say they’re not political, they are relying on that three-part division… And for them politics means the civil government, so any battle over policy disagreement or things that you and I might consider to be political, if they don’t have to do with the civil government, Reconstructionists say they are not political. So you got a Baptist church committee voting whether to hire a woman pastor, that would seem to me a political choice, whether a woman should have that kind of position. For Reconstructionists that’s not political, that’s ecclesiastical.

So they are using a very narrow definition of politics. And I’m a little bit more inclined, with someone like Bourdieu, to see the political implications in all kinds of decisions. So my definition of politics is far broader than that of the Reconstructionists. And I think they did a couple of things with that. On one level, I think theologically, they actually mean that that’s what the political things are. I think they also use it to mollify their opponents.

You hear them saying this person or that person have misconstrued what we do, and advocated, and what we do isn’t political, it’s not top-down, it’s from the bottom up, it’s not to be imposed, right? But they stop there. They don’t then go on to really explain how it might work, if it’s not imposed. And I write about in the book, they say this will only come about in a society that would be overwhelmingly Christian. Well, even overwhelmingly Christian is not unanimously Christian. Then it’s still going to be imposed on some people. And they don’t really talk about that very much.

So, to some extent they use this definition of politics to divert criticism. And I see some people get confused – “Oh, okay, they’re not political” – and they think that that means they’re somehow not seeking to reshape every aspect of our world. And the fact that they say they’re not political does not come anywhere close to saying they’re not seeking to reshape our world, because they are.

DOJ found that Georgia is giving kids with behavioral issues a subpar education and putting them in run-down buildings.

Georgia has been illegally and unnecessarily segregating thousands of students with behavioral issues and disabilities, isolating them in run-down facilities and providing them with subpar education, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

"It's a warehouse for kids the school system doesn't want or know how to deal with," a parent told the Justice Department of the program. The Justice Department detailed its findings in a letter earlier this month to Georgia's governor and attorney general.

But what the Justice Department found in Georgia is something that persists across the country: Schools continue to inappropriatelysegregate students with a range of behavioral needs and disabilities.

Children are often placed in more restrictive settings because traditional public schools show little flexibility in working with students who may need more support.

In Georgia, schools were quick to move children out of mainstream classrooms, the Justice Department noted. In some cases, students were recommended for placement after a single incident or a string of minor incidents, such as using inappropriate language with a teacher. Parents reported feeling pressured into agreeing to the placements.

In fact, many students who were placed in what's called the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS, didn't actually need to be there, the Justice Department said. Most could have stayed in their neighborhood schools if they'd been given more behavioral or mental-health support. "Nearly all students in the GNETS Program could receive services in more integrated settings, but do not have the opportunity to do so," the letter said.

A spokeswoman for Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal referred questions to the Georgia Department of Education, whose spokesman referred questions to the Attorney General's Office. Daryl Robinson, counsel to the Georgia Attorney General, told ProPublica, "We don't have any comment at this time."

This isn't the first time that the GNETS has drawn scrutiny. In 2010, a state audit found that the programs "are not held accountable for student performance" and questioned their cost effectiveness. Earlier, in 2004, a 13-year-old boy in the program hanged himself while held for hours isolated in a room.

Advocates have long been critical of the quality of services offered by the network.

"We have seen many, many clients whose behavior gets significantly worse in GNETS," said Leslie Lipson, an attorney with the Georgia Advocacy Office. "We've seen kids who are significantly behind their peers for no other reason than lack of instruction. We've seen students who are great football players or involved in student government or band who are sent to GNETS and have no opportunities to be part of their community."

In particular, it suggested increasing access to mental health services by locating mental health clinics "at or near schools" to provide services to students who would otherwise be at risk of being referred to more restrictive, segregated settings.

DOJ found that Georgia is giving kids with behavioral issues a subpar education and putting them in run-down buildings.

Georgia has been illegally and unnecessarily segregating thousands of students with behavioral issues and disabilities, isolating them in run-down facilities and providing them with subpar education, according to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

"It's a warehouse for kids the school system doesn't want or know how to deal with," a parent told the Justice Department of the program. The Justice Department detailed its findings in a letter earlier this month to Georgia's governor and attorney general.

But what the Justice Department found in Georgia is something that persists across the country: Schools continue to inappropriatelysegregate students with a range of behavioral needs and disabilities.

Children are often placed in more restrictive settings because traditional public schools show little flexibility in working with students who may need more support.

In Georgia, schools were quick to move children out of mainstream classrooms, the Justice Department noted. In some cases, students were recommended for placement after a single incident or a string of minor incidents, such as using inappropriate language with a teacher. Parents reported feeling pressured into agreeing to the placements.

In fact, many students who were placed in what's called the Georgia Network for Educational and Therapeutic Support, or GNETS, didn't actually need to be there, the Justice Department said. Most could have stayed in their neighborhood schools if they'd been given more behavioral or mental-health support. "Nearly all students in the GNETS Program could receive services in more integrated settings, but do not have the opportunity to do so," the letter said.

A spokeswoman for Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal referred questions to the Georgia Department of Education, whose spokesman referred questions to the Attorney General's Office. Daryl Robinson, counsel to the Georgia Attorney General, told ProPublica, "We don't have any comment at this time."

This isn't the first time that the GNETS has drawn scrutiny. In 2010, a state audit found that the programs "are not held accountable for student performance" and questioned their cost effectiveness. Earlier, in 2004, a 13-year-old boy in the program hanged himself while held for hours isolated in a room.

Advocates have long been critical of the quality of services offered by the network.

"We have seen many, many clients whose behavior gets significantly worse in GNETS," said Leslie Lipson, an attorney with the Georgia Advocacy Office. "We've seen kids who are significantly behind their peers for no other reason than lack of instruction. We've seen students who are great football players or involved in student government or band who are sent to GNETS and have no opportunities to be part of their community."

In particular, it suggested increasing access to mental health services by locating mental health clinics "at or near schools" to provide services to students who would otherwise be at risk of being referred to more restrictive, segregated settings.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/economy/why-medicare-all-makes-more-sense-now-everWhy Medicare-For-All Makes More Sense Now Than Everhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104519646/0/alternet~Why-MedicareForAll-Makes-More-Sense-Now-Than-Ever

Private health insurance drives up costs for everyone.

Medicare -- signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 -- was supposed to be just the first step.

For the fifty years before Medicare's enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that it would bring down the entire legislative package. President Harry Truman made universal health insurance a top priority, but got nowhere.

The five-decade long history of defeat convinced activists to shift to an incremental approach. They decided to start with a sympathetic group and debated which one that should be. The top candidates were seniors and children. On the one hand, covering children was relatively inexpensive and could lead to a lifetime of better health. On the other hand, seniors were most in need of health insurance and were already used to and supportive of Social Security's government-sponsored wage insurance. And they voted.

So the decision was made to start with them. The expectation was that, after Medicare was enacted, children and others would be quickly added. And, indeed, just seven years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law legislation which extended Medicare to people with serious and permanent disabilities.

But then came Watergate, distrust of government, and President Ronald Reagan's famous declaration, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Expansion of Medicare to children or other demographic groups disappeared from the public agenda. But the need for universal high-quality health care, efficiently provided, did not.

Conservatives and centrist Democrats, increasingly in control, looked for alternative approaches. Inclined toward private sector solutions but recognizing that some limited government role was essential, they favored private sector health insurance and savings supported by favorable tax treatment. For those who fell through the cracks and who were deemed worthy, they favored means-tested health insurance provided at the state level, with federal support.

Those are the solutions that have dominated since 1972, despite the obvious advantages of simply expanding Medicare. Means-tested Medicaid, included in the same 1965 legislation that enacted Medicare, was expanded every few years, most recently as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The means-tested State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted in 1997. And, the Affordable Care Act authorized state exchanges offering private health insurance subsidized with income-tested, government subsidies. During these decades, the tax expenditure on health care insurance grew from the fourth largest tax expenditure in 1986 to the largest today -- at a loss of revenue of over $200 billion a year. And during this same period, conservatives amended Medicare to include private health insurance and means-tested elements.

But these methods of providing health insurance are vastly inferior to universal, government-sponsored health insurance -- essentially, Medicare for All. Universal, government-sponsored insurance is the most effective and efficient way to cover everyone. Insurance is least expensive when it covers the most people; the large size of government-sponsored health insurance provides economies of scale and the greatest ability to negotiate over prices and control costs. Moreover, unlike private health insurance, a government plan has no marketing costs and no high CEO salaries. It can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. For these reasons, every other industrialized country provides universal coverage, spends less as a percentage of GDP, and produces better health outcomes.

But we don't have to look to other countries to see the advantages. Medicare covers seniors and people with disabilities, people who, on average, have the worst health and the most expensive medical conditions, requiring the largest numbers of doctor and hospital visits with the concomitant largest number of health care claims. Yet, Medicare's administrative costs are the lowest around. Medicaid, whose administrative costs vary from state to state, is less efficient than Medicare, because its coverage is statewide, not national, and it must impose complicated and expensive means testing, Even with that, both Medicare and Medicaid are significantly more efficient than private health insurance. Compared to Medicare's administrative costs of just 1.4 percent, the administrative costs of private health insurance sponsored by very small firms or purchased by individuals can run as high as 30 percent. Even the administrative costs of health insurance sponsored by large companies typically run around 7 percent.

As a stark illustration of the greater efficiency and effectiveness of Medicare, a proposal floated a few years ago to raise Medicare's initial age of eligibility from 65 to 67 -- requiring people to wait two additional years before they could enroll in Medicare -- would have resulted in increased health care costs for the nation as a whole of $5.7 billion a year and increased premium costs for both Medicare and all other health insurance of about 3 percent. Just as shrinking Medicare's coverage increases costs, expanding coverage would reduce overall health care costs

Imagine if President Bill Clinton in 1993 and President Barack Obama in 2009 had followed the direction of the architects of Medicare, a half century ago. Imagine if they had proposed incremental expansions of Medicare, including lowering the Medicare age to 62 or 55, creating a counterpart universal, government-sponsored Medikidsprogram, covering under Medicare people with pre-existing conditions, and providing all Americans the option of buying into Medicare. We likely would be on our way to Medicare for All, with all of its advantages. We likely would be forecasting long-termsurpluses in our federal budget, with all that would mean for greater spending on other pressing needs. Our businesses would be much more competitive. And we would join other nations in recognizing health care as a human right.

But it is not too late.

This upcoming presidential election could be a powerful defining moment. It could get us back on track to realizing the vision of the architects of Medicare a half century ago. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) believes in Medicare for All, as well as expansion of Social Security. In contrast, Governor Jeb Bush is calling for the phasing out of Medicare and wants to cut Social Security. If each Party's platform reflects these views, the American people will have a clear choice.

I see no better way to celebrate Medicare reaching its fiftieth anniversary than to expand Medicare. If we follow the lead of those visionary architects fifty years ago, those who come after us will inherit a nation where affordable, first class health insurance -- Medicare for All -- is a birthright.

Medicare -- signed into law fifty years ago, on July 30, 1965 -- was supposed to be just the first step.

For the fifty years before Medicare's enactment, progressives had fought unsuccessfully for universal, government-provided health insurance. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party platform advocated universal, government-sponsored, health insurance, but he was defeated in his quest for another term as president. In 1917, the California legislature approved universal health insurance, and the governor supported it, but a 1918 ballot resolution defeated the measure after a massive, well-financed business and physician-fueled campaign against it. President Franklin Roosevelt seriously considered including national health insurance in his 1935 Social Security legislation, but decided against it out of fear that it would bring down the entire legislative package. President Harry Truman made universal health insurance a top priority, but got nowhere.

The five-decade long history of defeat convinced activists to shift to an incremental approach. They decided to start with a sympathetic group and debated which one that should be. The top candidates were seniors and children. On the one hand, covering children was relatively inexpensive and could lead to a lifetime of better health. On the other hand, seniors were most in need of health insurance and were already used to and supportive of Social Security's government-sponsored wage insurance. And they voted.

So the decision was made to start with them. The expectation was that, after Medicare was enacted, children and others would be quickly added. And, indeed, just seven years later, in 1972, President Richard Nixon signed into law legislation which extended Medicare to people with serious and permanent disabilities.

But then came Watergate, distrust of government, and President Ronald Reagan's famous declaration, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Expansion of Medicare to children or other demographic groups disappeared from the public agenda. But the need for universal high-quality health care, efficiently provided, did not.

Conservatives and centrist Democrats, increasingly in control, looked for alternative approaches. Inclined toward private sector solutions but recognizing that some limited government role was essential, they favored private sector health insurance and savings supported by favorable tax treatment. For those who fell through the cracks and who were deemed worthy, they favored means-tested health insurance provided at the state level, with federal support.

Those are the solutions that have dominated since 1972, despite the obvious advantages of simply expanding Medicare. Means-tested Medicaid, included in the same 1965 legislation that enacted Medicare, was expanded every few years, most recently as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The means-tested State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was enacted in 1997. And, the Affordable Care Act authorized state exchanges offering private health insurance subsidized with income-tested, government subsidies. During these decades, the tax expenditure on health care insurance grew from the fourth largest tax expenditure in 1986 to the largest today -- at a loss of revenue of over $200 billion a year. And during this same period, conservatives amended Medicare to include private health insurance and means-tested elements.

But these methods of providing health insurance are vastly inferior to universal, government-sponsored health insurance -- essentially, Medicare for All. Universal, government-sponsored insurance is the most effective and efficient way to cover everyone. Insurance is least expensive when it covers the most people; the large size of government-sponsored health insurance provides economies of scale and the greatest ability to negotiate over prices and control costs. Moreover, unlike private health insurance, a government plan has no marketing costs and no high CEO salaries. It can provide health care less expensively and more efficiently for everyone. For these reasons, every other industrialized country provides universal coverage, spends less as a percentage of GDP, and produces better health outcomes.

But we don't have to look to other countries to see the advantages. Medicare covers seniors and people with disabilities, people who, on average, have the worst health and the most expensive medical conditions, requiring the largest numbers of doctor and hospital visits with the concomitant largest number of health care claims. Yet, Medicare's administrative costs are the lowest around. Medicaid, whose administrative costs vary from state to state, is less efficient than Medicare, because its coverage is statewide, not national, and it must impose complicated and expensive means testing, Even with that, both Medicare and Medicaid are significantly more efficient than private health insurance. Compared to Medicare's administrative costs of just 1.4 percent, the administrative costs of private health insurance sponsored by very small firms or purchased by individuals can run as high as 30 percent. Even the administrative costs of health insurance sponsored by large companies typically run around 7 percent.

As a stark illustration of the greater efficiency and effectiveness of Medicare, a proposal floated a few years ago to raise Medicare's initial age of eligibility from 65 to 67 -- requiring people to wait two additional years before they could enroll in Medicare -- would have resulted in increased health care costs for the nation as a whole of $5.7 billion a year and increased premium costs for both Medicare and all other health insurance of about 3 percent. Just as shrinking Medicare's coverage increases costs, expanding coverage would reduce overall health care costs

Imagine if President Bill Clinton in 1993 and President Barack Obama in 2009 had followed the direction of the architects of Medicare, a half century ago. Imagine if they had proposed incremental expansions of Medicare, including lowering the Medicare age to 62 or 55, creating a counterpart universal, government-sponsored Medikidsprogram, covering under Medicare people with pre-existing conditions, and providing all Americans the option of buying into Medicare. We likely would be on our way to Medicare for All, with all of its advantages. We likely would be forecasting long-termsurpluses in our federal budget, with all that would mean for greater spending on other pressing needs. Our businesses would be much more competitive. And we would join other nations in recognizing health care as a human right.

But it is not too late.

This upcoming presidential election could be a powerful defining moment. It could get us back on track to realizing the vision of the architects of Medicare a half century ago. Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) believes in Medicare for All, as well as expansion of Social Security. In contrast, Governor Jeb Bush is calling for the phasing out of Medicare and wants to cut Social Security. If each Party's platform reflects these views, the American people will have a clear choice.

I see no better way to celebrate Medicare reaching its fiftieth anniversary than to expand Medicare. If we follow the lead of those visionary architects fifty years ago, those who come after us will inherit a nation where affordable, first class health insurance -- Medicare for All -- is a birthright.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/mom-called-police-my-3-year-old-son-after-playground-accident-0A Mom Called the Police on My 3-Year-Old Son After a Playground Accidenthttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104578162/0/alternet~A-Mom-Called-the-Police-on-My-YearOld-Son-After-a-Playground-Accident

"She wanted to press charges," the police officer told me. I'm not sure if he meant against me or my pre-schooler.

I wasn't sure whether or not to write about this. I generally prefer not to write about my son, out of respect for his privacy, and I don't want to put myself in a legally questionable situation by writing about what happened. But it's been several days since the incident and I've still got a crazy cocktail of rage, panic, and sadness churning inside my chest and I don't know how else to get it out.

Here's the short version: A mother called the police after my son and her daughter collided in a playground accident. That really happened. He's 3.

The longer version is this: I was sitting on a bench, in a spot where I could see the entire circular track the kids scoot and ride their bikes around. When my son didn't complete his lap in a timely manner, I stood up to look for him and saw him standing with a family including several children. He's extremely social and often stops to talk and make friends, so I assumed he was just chatting with them.

A minute or so later I heard him yelling "Mommy, Mommy." I ran over to find two children sobbing hysterically, a little girl and my son.

A woman sitting nearby volunteered, "I saw the whole thing! They ran into each other. They're both just scared." I gathered my son into my arms and comforted him, telling him it was OK, that it was an accident.

"I didn't mean to knock her over," he sobbed. He then repeatedly tried to apologize to the little girl and her mother, who ignored him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he sputtered over and over.

"Is she OK?" I asked the little girl's mother. She told me her tooth was wiggly and bleeding. My son was still hysterical, so I picked him up and started to move to another corner to continue calming him down.

The other mother motioned to me not to leave.

"What do you want from me?" I asked her. "It was an accident."

I didn't mean it in a sarcastic way at all -- I wasn't sure if she wanted money, or my contact info, or in what way she expected me to help. I was (probably stupidly) prepared to do what she asked for. The last thing I expected was what she said next.

"I called the police."

"YOU CALLED THE POLICE?" This is the point at which I have been mentally punching this woman for days now.

"Your son hit my daughter," she said. "I called the police."

At that moment, my internal Mama Bear rose up to her hind legs and bared her claws. "He's 3 YEARS OLD. It was an accident," I snarl/yelled. I have never in my life felt a sense of assertiveness so strong for my own self, but when it came to my kid, I felt an unprecedented sense of agency and strength. I knew I would stand up for my child in absolutely any way needed to protect him.

"She's crazy," shouted the witness. "I saw the whole thing. They ran into each other. It was a total accident."

I asked the witness if she would stay until the police arrived, then scooped up my hysterical 3-year-old and marched to the other end of the playground, where I stewed as he asked questions like "Why did she call the police? Am I going to jail? Is the little girl OK? Is SHE going to jail?"

When the police car rolled up outside the gate of the playground area, I let the woman tell her side of the story before walking over to talk to them.

"It's my son," I volunteered. "He's sitting right there, in the green helmet."

"Look," the police officer tried to explain to the other mother, "I can see him crying from here. It was an accident. It's not like he did it on purpose."

The mother, who had a shaky command of English, then leaned down to her daughter and asked her to translate to the police that "the mother" (me) hadn't shown up for 10 or 20 minutes after the accident, which was a complete lie. I'd actually been running my stopwatch as my son went around the track so I know it hadn't been more than 2-and-a-half minutes since he'd set out.

Again, the police explained that it was an accident and there was nothing they could do about it.

"It's a park," said the officer from before."Kids are running around all over the place here."

They offered to call an ambulance for the injured little girl, which the mother accepted. I stayed back while they loaded her in and finished their interactions.

From my vantage point I could see another family member or friend who had been with them telling her version of the story to a large crowd that had collected. From her broad "wooshing" hand gestures, I could see that she was intimating that my son was some sort of reckless danger to society on a 3-wheeler scooter. I somehow managed to not stomp over there and ask her to stop regaling the park with stories about my 3-year-old son at least until he had stopped sobbing.

When the family was on their way, I asked the police officers if they needed my information or anything. They said no. "She wanted to press charges," he told me. I'm not sure if he meant against me or my pre-schooler.

"I can see the woman over there telling everyone the story..." I began.

"Yeah, he's a maniac, right?" the police officer said winkingly, before he and his partner headed on their way.

It's been a few days since this happened, and my son seems to be fine. He got a scare, but he's back on his scooter and hasn't mentioned the incident again. He's always been very conscientious about watching out for pedestrians while on his scooter, but it can't hurt for him to be even more so. We haven't yet been back to the area of the park where the collision happened, but I think that's more because of my fear than his.

Because while he's fine, I'm not. I'm furious. And I'm scared. My black son just had his first police interaction at age 3.

I have tried to be understanding of the panic the other mother probably felt when her daughter was hurt. My son knocked his teeth back into his gums in a fight with a slide and had to be held down in the ER while he got stitches where he bit through his own tongue. I know how it feels to be scared for your injured child. I feel terrible, as did my son, for the little girl who was hurt.

It's still hard for me to understand how a fellow mother could call the police on a sobbing 3-year-old. But I want to believe that she simply didn't know what to do, and called the police out of fear and confusion. I even want to believe that she was trying to lay the groundwork to sue me, that she wanted money. I want to believe those things more than some things I could believe.

I'm glad the police were reasonable and straightened things out. Perhaps in this instance, it was best they were there to handle what was obviously a touchy situation. In this instance. This time.

But to be the mother of a black son is to be scared for them, constantly. Black mothers know this better than me, have known it for a long time. I am not the person to tell that story.

I don't know if there was a racial component to what happened this time, but I can't help but flash forward to someday when someone may wrongfully point their finger at my son again, someday when he's not an adorable 3-year-old, someday when I'm not there to speak for him.

And I think that's why my guts are still roiling days later, why I am still feeling emotional about an incident that everyone seems to agree was crazy, but over now. That I shouldn't let it get to me. It got to me. I'm not over it. I wish I was.

But if nothing else, I am glad I felt that Mama Bear rise up inside me. I am glad that I knew, in that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would and will always do anything, ANYTHING to protect my son. Because, unfortunately, he lives in a world where he needs a little extra protection.

"She wanted to press charges," the police officer told me. I'm not sure if he meant against me or my pre-schooler.

I wasn't sure whether or not to write about this. I generally prefer not to write about my son, out of respect for his privacy, and I don't want to put myself in a legally questionable situation by writing about what happened. But it's been several days since the incident and I've still got a crazy cocktail of rage, panic, and sadness churning inside my chest and I don't know how else to get it out.

Here's the short version: A mother called the police after my son and her daughter collided in a playground accident. That really happened. He's 3.

The longer version is this: I was sitting on a bench, in a spot where I could see the entire circular track the kids scoot and ride their bikes around. When my son didn't complete his lap in a timely manner, I stood up to look for him and saw him standing with a family including several children. He's extremely social and often stops to talk and make friends, so I assumed he was just chatting with them.

A minute or so later I heard him yelling "Mommy, Mommy." I ran over to find two children sobbing hysterically, a little girl and my son.

A woman sitting nearby volunteered, "I saw the whole thing! They ran into each other. They're both just scared." I gathered my son into my arms and comforted him, telling him it was OK, that it was an accident.

"I didn't mean to knock her over," he sobbed. He then repeatedly tried to apologize to the little girl and her mother, who ignored him. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he sputtered over and over.

"Is she OK?" I asked the little girl's mother. She told me her tooth was wiggly and bleeding. My son was still hysterical, so I picked him up and started to move to another corner to continue calming him down.

The other mother motioned to me not to leave.

"What do you want from me?" I asked her. "It was an accident."

I didn't mean it in a sarcastic way at all -- I wasn't sure if she wanted money, or my contact info, or in what way she expected me to help. I was (probably stupidly) prepared to do what she asked for. The last thing I expected was what she said next.

"I called the police."

"YOU CALLED THE POLICE?" This is the point at which I have been mentally punching this woman for days now.

"Your son hit my daughter," she said. "I called the police."

At that moment, my internal Mama Bear rose up to her hind legs and bared her claws. "He's 3 YEARS OLD. It was an accident," I snarl/yelled. I have never in my life felt a sense of assertiveness so strong for my own self, but when it came to my kid, I felt an unprecedented sense of agency and strength. I knew I would stand up for my child in absolutely any way needed to protect him.

"She's crazy," shouted the witness. "I saw the whole thing. They ran into each other. It was a total accident."

I asked the witness if she would stay until the police arrived, then scooped up my hysterical 3-year-old and marched to the other end of the playground, where I stewed as he asked questions like "Why did she call the police? Am I going to jail? Is the little girl OK? Is SHE going to jail?"

When the police car rolled up outside the gate of the playground area, I let the woman tell her side of the story before walking over to talk to them.

"It's my son," I volunteered. "He's sitting right there, in the green helmet."

"Look," the police officer tried to explain to the other mother, "I can see him crying from here. It was an accident. It's not like he did it on purpose."

The mother, who had a shaky command of English, then leaned down to her daughter and asked her to translate to the police that "the mother" (me) hadn't shown up for 10 or 20 minutes after the accident, which was a complete lie. I'd actually been running my stopwatch as my son went around the track so I know it hadn't been more than 2-and-a-half minutes since he'd set out.

Again, the police explained that it was an accident and there was nothing they could do about it.

"It's a park," said the officer from before."Kids are running around all over the place here."

They offered to call an ambulance for the injured little girl, which the mother accepted. I stayed back while they loaded her in and finished their interactions.

From my vantage point I could see another family member or friend who had been with them telling her version of the story to a large crowd that had collected. From her broad "wooshing" hand gestures, I could see that she was intimating that my son was some sort of reckless danger to society on a 3-wheeler scooter. I somehow managed to not stomp over there and ask her to stop regaling the park with stories about my 3-year-old son at least until he had stopped sobbing.

When the family was on their way, I asked the police officers if they needed my information or anything. They said no. "She wanted to press charges," he told me. I'm not sure if he meant against me or my pre-schooler.

"I can see the woman over there telling everyone the story..." I began.

"Yeah, he's a maniac, right?" the police officer said winkingly, before he and his partner headed on their way.

It's been a few days since this happened, and my son seems to be fine. He got a scare, but he's back on his scooter and hasn't mentioned the incident again. He's always been very conscientious about watching out for pedestrians while on his scooter, but it can't hurt for him to be even more so. We haven't yet been back to the area of the park where the collision happened, but I think that's more because of my fear than his.

Because while he's fine, I'm not. I'm furious. And I'm scared. My black son just had his first police interaction at age 3.

I have tried to be understanding of the panic the other mother probably felt when her daughter was hurt. My son knocked his teeth back into his gums in a fight with a slide and had to be held down in the ER while he got stitches where he bit through his own tongue. I know how it feels to be scared for your injured child. I feel terrible, as did my son, for the little girl who was hurt.

It's still hard for me to understand how a fellow mother could call the police on a sobbing 3-year-old. But I want to believe that she simply didn't know what to do, and called the police out of fear and confusion. I even want to believe that she was trying to lay the groundwork to sue me, that she wanted money. I want to believe those things more than some things I could believe.

I'm glad the police were reasonable and straightened things out. Perhaps in this instance, it was best they were there to handle what was obviously a touchy situation. In this instance. This time.

But to be the mother of a black son is to be scared for them, constantly. Black mothers know this better than me, have known it for a long time. I am not the person to tell that story.

I don't know if there was a racial component to what happened this time, but I can't help but flash forward to someday when someone may wrongfully point their finger at my son again, someday when he's not an adorable 3-year-old, someday when I'm not there to speak for him.

And I think that's why my guts are still roiling days later, why I am still feeling emotional about an incident that everyone seems to agree was crazy, but over now. That I shouldn't let it get to me. It got to me. I'm not over it. I wish I was.

But if nothing else, I am glad I felt that Mama Bear rise up inside me. I am glad that I knew, in that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would and will always do anything, ANYTHING to protect my son. Because, unfortunately, he lives in a world where he needs a little extra protection.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/media/bill-maher-running-office-americans-would-probably-elect-pedophile-atheistBill Maher On Running For Office: Americans Would ‘Probably Elect a Pedophile Before An Atheist’http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104578170/0/alternet~Bill-Maher-On-Running-For-Office-Americans-Would-%e2%80%98Probably-Elect-a-Pedophile-Before-An-Atheist%e2%80%99

Maher also admitted that he has wrestled with the fact that many of his show’s younger viewers use Real Time as a primary news source.

Real Time host Bill Maher shot down the idea again of going from political commentator to politician while promoting a show in San Diego.

“First of all, I have no desire to run for office,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Second, I could never even come close to winning, because I’m an atheist. Poll after poll shows Americans would elect almost anyone before they elect an atheist. They would probably elect a pedophile before an atheist. Atheism, in the American lexicon, is just the worst thing you could be.”

Maher has said in the past that while his own lack of faith would stop him from being an elected official, it might not be as big of a concern for future candidates, going so far as to call atheism “the new gay marriage.”

He also recorded a short PSA earlier this year for Openly Secular, an atheist group developed by the Richard Dawkins Foundation and similar organizations, comparing anti-atheist prejudice to discrimination against LGBT communities and encouraging atheists to voice their opinions in the open.

“Don’t let it look like an America where the most reasonable — not to mention correct — fact-based argument is really the weird one,” he said at the time. “The one held by a tiny minority of misguided eggheads. No, secularists are bigger than that, way bigger. But you’ve gotta show yourself. You might find you have more friends than you think.”

Maher also admitted that he has wrestled with the fact that many of his show’s younger viewers use Real Time as a primary news source, as opposed to traditional media.

“If people weren’t interested in the news, they wouldn’t be watching us at all; they’d be watchingDancing With the Stars. But they are watching the show, I think, because they’re busy and don’t have time to catch up with the news,” he told the Union-Tribune. “So, somewhere in each show, I want to include every story I think is important for them to hear about that week. These might not be the same stories covered on the nightly news, but that gets to why I think the nightly news is so lacking.”

Maher performs in San Diego on Sunday. Real Timereturns to the air on Aug. 7. His PSA for Openly Secular can be seen below.

Maher also admitted that he has wrestled with the fact that many of his show’s younger viewers use Real Time as a primary news source.

Real Time host Bill Maher shot down the idea again of going from political commentator to politician while promoting a show in San Diego.

“First of all, I have no desire to run for office,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Second, I could never even come close to winning, because I’m an atheist. Poll after poll shows Americans would elect almost anyone before they elect an atheist. They would probably elect a pedophile before an atheist. Atheism, in the American lexicon, is just the worst thing you could be.”

Maher has said in the past that while his own lack of faith would stop him from being an elected official, it might not be as big of a concern for future candidates, going so far as to call atheism “the new gay marriage.”

He also recorded a short PSA earlier this year for Openly Secular, an atheist group developed by the Richard Dawkins Foundation and similar organizations, comparing anti-atheist prejudice to discrimination against LGBT communities and encouraging atheists to voice their opinions in the open.

“Don’t let it look like an America where the most reasonable — not to mention correct — fact-based argument is really the weird one,” he said at the time. “The one held by a tiny minority of misguided eggheads. No, secularists are bigger than that, way bigger. But you’ve gotta show yourself. You might find you have more friends than you think.”

Maher also admitted that he has wrestled with the fact that many of his show’s younger viewers use Real Time as a primary news source, as opposed to traditional media.

“If people weren’t interested in the news, they wouldn’t be watching us at all; they’d be watchingDancing With the Stars. But they are watching the show, I think, because they’re busy and don’t have time to catch up with the news,” he told the Union-Tribune. “So, somewhere in each show, I want to include every story I think is important for them to hear about that week. These might not be the same stories covered on the nightly news, but that gets to why I think the nightly news is so lacking.”

Maher performs in San Diego on Sunday. Real Timereturns to the air on Aug. 7. His PSA for Openly Secular can be seen below.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/murders-dont-stop-how-war-drugs-responsible-mexicos-outrageous-death-tollThe Murders Don't Stop: How the War on Drugs Is Responsible For Mexico's Outrageous Death Tollhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104156276/0/alternet~The-Murders-Dont-Stop-How-the-War-on-Drugs-Is-Responsible-For-Mexicos-Outrageous-Death-Toll

The war on drugs is a war on people, where the majority of casualties are black and brown bodies.

When I first shook hands with Felipe de la Cruz Sandoval this winter outside of the Mexican Consulate in NYC, images of my one of my favorite tios sprung to mind, creating an immediate sense of kinship towards the short, mustachioed Mexican professor. De La Cruz Sandoval, thousands of miles from his home in Ayotzinapa, Mexico where 43 of his students were forcibly disappeared by cartel gunmen and corrupt municipal officers, was doing exactly what my tio would do- travel the world in search of justice.

Sadly, his search for his missing students has uncovered more tragedy - 129 bodies unrelated to the case were recently uncovered in 60 unmarked graves across Guerrero, the same state where the students disappeared.

Omar Garcia, one of the survivors of the attack against the Ayotzinapa students, recently told the UK Guardian that: “[Mexicans are] living in a very serious situation where anyone can be disappeared and murdered, buried in a secret grave and be forgotten, unless their families look for them.”

Mr. Garcia’s prognosis is disturbingly accurate. A recently released report by the Mexican government showed that there were 165,000 documented cases of homicide between 2007 and 2014 in Mexico — “a period that accounts for some of the bloodiest years of the nation’s war against the drug cartels.” Compare this to the more than 26,000 civilianswho are said to have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war in 2001 and the 160,500 who died in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. The war on drugs is a war on people, on par with officially recognized military operations, where the majority of casualties are black and brown bodies.

While not all of the killings can be directly linked to the war on drugs, some counts have attributed over 55 percent to the failed drug war. Regardless, U.S. drug prohibition and American funding of the Merida Initiative, both abject failures, have only served to exacerbate, if not outright perpetuate, the violence in Latin America.

Most recently, cartel leader El Chapo Guzman’s recent escape from prison, and the international media attention that followed, only served to reinforce the silence that surrounds the destruction of brown bodies, something known far too well by Professor De La Cruz and Sister Consuelo Morales, a Mexican nun taking on the drug war by crusading against Mexican cartels and corrupt police.

While Latinos have the power to end the failed war on drugs in the ballot box, we have an obligation to speak out now against the violence enacted on our bodies by bad laws and misguided policies. As an incredibly diverse gente, I hope that you see how the drug war is a Latino issue permeating the core of our community and join the chorus of voices shouting No More Drug War.

The war on drugs is a war on people, where the majority of casualties are black and brown bodies.

When I first shook hands with Felipe de la Cruz Sandoval this winter outside of the Mexican Consulate in NYC, images of my one of my favorite tios sprung to mind, creating an immediate sense of kinship towards the short, mustachioed Mexican professor. De La Cruz Sandoval, thousands of miles from his home in Ayotzinapa, Mexico where 43 of his students were forcibly disappeared by cartel gunmen and corrupt municipal officers, was doing exactly what my tio would do- travel the world in search of justice.

Sadly, his search for his missing students has uncovered more tragedy - 129 bodies unrelated to the case were recently uncovered in 60 unmarked graves across Guerrero, the same state where the students disappeared.

Omar Garcia, one of the survivors of the attack against the Ayotzinapa students, recently told the UK Guardian that: “[Mexicans are] living in a very serious situation where anyone can be disappeared and murdered, buried in a secret grave and be forgotten, unless their families look for them.”

Mr. Garcia’s prognosis is disturbingly accurate. A recently released report by the Mexican government showed that there were 165,000 documented cases of homicide between 2007 and 2014 in Mexico — “a period that accounts for some of the bloodiest years of the nation’s war against the drug cartels.” Compare this to the more than 26,000 civilianswho are said to have been killed in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war in 2001 and the 160,500 who died in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003. The war on drugs is a war on people, on par with officially recognized military operations, where the majority of casualties are black and brown bodies.

While not all of the killings can be directly linked to the war on drugs, some counts have attributed over 55 percent to the failed drug war. Regardless, U.S. drug prohibition and American funding of the Merida Initiative, both abject failures, have only served to exacerbate, if not outright perpetuate, the violence in Latin America.

Most recently, cartel leader El Chapo Guzman’s recent escape from prison, and the international media attention that followed, only served to reinforce the silence that surrounds the destruction of brown bodies, something known far too well by Professor De La Cruz and Sister Consuelo Morales, a Mexican nun taking on the drug war by crusading against Mexican cartels and corrupt police.

While Latinos have the power to end the failed war on drugs in the ballot box, we have an obligation to speak out now against the violence enacted on our bodies by bad laws and misguided policies. As an incredibly diverse gente, I hope that you see how the drug war is a Latino issue permeating the core of our community and join the chorus of voices shouting No More Drug War.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/sex-amp-relationships/time-i-tried-lose-my-virginity-christian-who-liked-get-bibleThat Time I Tried to Lose My Virginity to a Christian Who Liked to Get Off to the Biblehttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104352018/0/alternet~That-Time-I-Tried-to-Lose-My-Virginity-to-a-Christian-Who-Liked-to-Get-Off-to-the-Bible

I was, like many teenage girls, not aware that I had much say in the matter when it came to sex.

This is part one in a three-part series.

A few months after I turned 17, I decided I was ready to lose my virginity. And though I was excellent at losing just about everything else in my life—car keys, IHOP leftovers, my dignity—virginity proved to be an elusive struggle. Part of the problem was that I had been recently dumped by my high school boyfriend, James, whom I was still desperately in love with. It took me three years to get over him, which is not an unheard of timespan in the world of teenage grief, except for the fact that our entire relationship was only seven months long.

And though he kissed in a way that was reminiscent of a snake having a seizure, I thought he was terribly handsome—wolfish, a bit vampiric, and scowly in a Bronte novel way. My friends would later describe him as looking like the unfortunate lovechild of Mitt Romney and Beavis from Beavis and Butthead. But James would play Jewel songs for me on guitar, so obviously our love was deep and forever-binding.

Until he met a waitress at the chain restaurant by the mall where he worked, that is. Shortly after that, he cheated on me, dumped me, and married her a short time later, which threw a real wrench into my virginity plans, and my belief that the power of Jewel songs could save any relationship.

I spent the better part of the next month sobbing into fruit-composte pancakes and writing awful feelings poetry, which I later turned into songs. A snippet of one such song, titled “I Hope You’re on Fire Somewhere,” went like this: “I find ways to blame you / for every little thing / It’s your fault that I stubbed my toe / It’s your fault I can’t sing.” (For the record, I can’t, nor could I ever sing. I sound like Kermit the Frog on quaaludes.)

Eventually, my slightly younger, yet wiser friend (her wisdom gleaned from being the first in our friend group to have smoked pot a couple times) imparted this advice to me: “If you wanna get over someone, you have to get under someone.” This was revolutionary. And, I thought, such a clever use of wordplay. I told myself I would try it, and quickly shoved my feelings poetry to the other side of the desk to make way for my new life, which was to involve, I presumed, a lot of dicks.

Boy, did I turn out to be right.

The first fellow I met was named Will. He worked at J.B.’s restaurant, which was like a trashier version of Denny’s, if you can imagine that. Will looked so much like my ex that dating him felt almost like an act of revenge in itself. He was also a born-again Christian. I didn’t much care for religion, having been raised with only a smattering of hippie and the occasional dash of my mother’s version of Native American spirituality, which basically involved putting a lot of sage on things. I had been forced to attend Catholic mass when visiting my grandparents a few times, and experienced one unfortunate Sunday School lesson when I was seven, whereby the teacher asked us to draw God and then yelled at me for drawing a cat swimming in the ocean. But other than that, I had no real conception of organized religion, and hence, Will’s born-again-ness didn’t faze me.

Our first (and last) date involved coffee at Denny’s, and afterward, he invited me back to his place to “look at his yearbook.” A smarter person would have seen through this very flimsy veneer, but I was not a smart person, obviously, and besides, I was trying to turn over a new leaf. A sluttier one. Also, I did have a vested interest in his plan, seeing as how I was the editor of my school’s yearbook. To his credit, we did, in fact, look at his yearbook for about 10 minutes. When that got boring, he picked up his Bible, and began reading parts to me outloud.

“This is so dope,” he said, prefacing a passage from Corinthians. “‘Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.’ Doesn’t that blow your mind?”

I agreed that it did, even though it didn’t seem like something that really needed to be spelled out. Love’s not delighted by evil? You don’t say! Put that on a wall poster with a kitten. I didn’t have much time to launch into a philosophical conversation about love’s delights, however, because shortly after that, Will told me he was turned on and needed to masturbate.

Not “want to masturbate,” mind you, or even “would like to,”—he needed to masturbate. And though I would like to think that I was at least partly responsible for his sudden excitement, even I could see that this erection belonged to God. Or, at least, God’s words. Again, I did not have time to ponder this strange unfolding—I would much later recognize it as a fetish—because Will had unzipped his khakis and was already furiously stroking his Bible-induced boner, while I sat there in stunned silence with my hands clasped on my lap, in an unintentional prayer-position.

To say that I participated in this turn of events would be a stretch of any imagination, and yet, I didn’t stop it either. I was, like many teenage girls (and even some adults), not aware that I had much say in the matter when it came to sex. I was led to believe that sex was something boys orchestrated and girls endured. No one ever said much to me about agency, boundaries, or even my own pleasure. Besides, Will wasn’t even touching me, so I felt like I couldn’t be that offended. And yet, I knew that I did not want it to be happening, but could do or say nothing except lay there and wonder why every teenage boy had the same Scarface poster. Occasionally Will would look up at me to see if I was pleased with the Lord’s handiwork, and I would offer him a weak smile, hoping this small effort would motivate him to hurry it along.

After what felt like an hour but was surely far less, he finally finished, pulled his pants back on, and drove me home. While I could somewhat confidently say “a sexual thing happened to me,” this experience was not something I would be boasting about in AOL chat rooms, nor did it bring me any closer to losing my v-card. We didn’t even kiss.

When I refused to return his calls, he came to my work, which was in the shoe department at Mervyn’s, and gave me two CDs (Korn’s self-titled album, and The Eagles Greatest Hits). I think it was his way of apologizing, but not even Don Henley’s liquid honey voice could make me unsee what I saw. The waters had been parted. The staff turned out to be a squat, veiny snake.

Check back next week for part two of “The wrong way to lose your virginity.”

I was, like many teenage girls, not aware that I had much say in the matter when it came to sex.

This is part one in a three-part series.

A few months after I turned 17, I decided I was ready to lose my virginity. And though I was excellent at losing just about everything else in my life—car keys, IHOP leftovers, my dignity—virginity proved to be an elusive struggle. Part of the problem was that I had been recently dumped by my high school boyfriend, James, whom I was still desperately in love with. It took me three years to get over him, which is not an unheard of timespan in the world of teenage grief, except for the fact that our entire relationship was only seven months long.

And though he kissed in a way that was reminiscent of a snake having a seizure, I thought he was terribly handsome—wolfish, a bit vampiric, and scowly in a Bronte novel way. My friends would later describe him as looking like the unfortunate lovechild of Mitt Romney and Beavis from Beavis and Butthead. But James would play Jewel songs for me on guitar, so obviously our love was deep and forever-binding.

Until he met a waitress at the chain restaurant by the mall where he worked, that is. Shortly after that, he cheated on me, dumped me, and married her a short time later, which threw a real wrench into my virginity plans, and my belief that the power of Jewel songs could save any relationship.

I spent the better part of the next month sobbing into fruit-composte pancakes and writing awful feelings poetry, which I later turned into songs. A snippet of one such song, titled “I Hope You’re on Fire Somewhere,” went like this: “I find ways to blame you / for every little thing / It’s your fault that I stubbed my toe / It’s your fault I can’t sing.” (For the record, I can’t, nor could I ever sing. I sound like Kermit the Frog on quaaludes.)

Eventually, my slightly younger, yet wiser friend (her wisdom gleaned from being the first in our friend group to have smoked pot a couple times) imparted this advice to me: “If you wanna get over someone, you have to get under someone.” This was revolutionary. And, I thought, such a clever use of wordplay. I told myself I would try it, and quickly shoved my feelings poetry to the other side of the desk to make way for my new life, which was to involve, I presumed, a lot of dicks.

Boy, did I turn out to be right.

The first fellow I met was named Will. He worked at J.B.’s restaurant, which was like a trashier version of Denny’s, if you can imagine that. Will looked so much like my ex that dating him felt almost like an act of revenge in itself. He was also a born-again Christian. I didn’t much care for religion, having been raised with only a smattering of hippie and the occasional dash of my mother’s version of Native American spirituality, which basically involved putting a lot of sage on things. I had been forced to attend Catholic mass when visiting my grandparents a few times, and experienced one unfortunate Sunday School lesson when I was seven, whereby the teacher asked us to draw God and then yelled at me for drawing a cat swimming in the ocean. But other than that, I had no real conception of organized religion, and hence, Will’s born-again-ness didn’t faze me.

Our first (and last) date involved coffee at Denny’s, and afterward, he invited me back to his place to “look at his yearbook.” A smarter person would have seen through this very flimsy veneer, but I was not a smart person, obviously, and besides, I was trying to turn over a new leaf. A sluttier one. Also, I did have a vested interest in his plan, seeing as how I was the editor of my school’s yearbook. To his credit, we did, in fact, look at his yearbook for about 10 minutes. When that got boring, he picked up his Bible, and began reading parts to me outloud.

“This is so dope,” he said, prefacing a passage from Corinthians. “‘Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.’ Doesn’t that blow your mind?”

I agreed that it did, even though it didn’t seem like something that really needed to be spelled out. Love’s not delighted by evil? You don’t say! Put that on a wall poster with a kitten. I didn’t have much time to launch into a philosophical conversation about love’s delights, however, because shortly after that, Will told me he was turned on and needed to masturbate.

Not “want to masturbate,” mind you, or even “would like to,”—he needed to masturbate. And though I would like to think that I was at least partly responsible for his sudden excitement, even I could see that this erection belonged to God. Or, at least, God’s words. Again, I did not have time to ponder this strange unfolding—I would much later recognize it as a fetish—because Will had unzipped his khakis and was already furiously stroking his Bible-induced boner, while I sat there in stunned silence with my hands clasped on my lap, in an unintentional prayer-position.

To say that I participated in this turn of events would be a stretch of any imagination, and yet, I didn’t stop it either. I was, like many teenage girls (and even some adults), not aware that I had much say in the matter when it came to sex. I was led to believe that sex was something boys orchestrated and girls endured. No one ever said much to me about agency, boundaries, or even my own pleasure. Besides, Will wasn’t even touching me, so I felt like I couldn’t be that offended. And yet, I knew that I did not want it to be happening, but could do or say nothing except lay there and wonder why every teenage boy had the same Scarface poster. Occasionally Will would look up at me to see if I was pleased with the Lord’s handiwork, and I would offer him a weak smile, hoping this small effort would motivate him to hurry it along.

After what felt like an hour but was surely far less, he finally finished, pulled his pants back on, and drove me home. While I could somewhat confidently say “a sexual thing happened to me,” this experience was not something I would be boasting about in AOL chat rooms, nor did it bring me any closer to losing my v-card. We didn’t even kiss.

When I refused to return his calls, he came to my work, which was in the shoe department at Mervyn’s, and gave me two CDs (Korn’s self-titled album, and The Eagles Greatest Hits). I think it was his way of apologizing, but not even Don Henley’s liquid honey voice could make me unsee what I saw. The waters had been parted. The staff turned out to be a squat, veiny snake.

Check back next week for part two of “The wrong way to lose your virginity.”

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http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-donald-trump-feeding-death-american-dreamHow Donald Trump Is Feeding Off the Death of the American Dreamhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104437182/0/alternet~How-Donald-Trump-Is-Feeding-Off-the-Death-of-the-American-Dream

The fascinating and dangerous trick of Trump is that he offers an escape from responsibility.

“The American dream is dead” and “the US is going to hell” do not make for inspirational campaign slogans. It is difficult to imagine either one decorating a vehicular bumper next to adhesive flags and yellow ribbons. Somehow through his sheer lunacy, paranoid xenophobia, and buffoonish and boorish antics, the Vaudevillian billionaire Donald Trump, against almost all predictions, has managed to detonate the boring Republican primary, and place among the wreckage the typically taboo and unutterable idea that America is a country in decline.

Historically, Americans have preferred optimism, smiles, and forecasts of long days under clear skies in a perfect climate. Campaign strategists have often advised their candidates to avoid using the word “problems” in speeches and interviews. America does not have “problems,” they explain. It has “challenges.” When President Carter, who unlike Trump is not a maniac, but a man of great wisdom, suggested that American greed, isolation, and materialism ushered into the culture a “crisis of confidence,” the press, his Republican opponents, and many Democratic allies excoriated him. The public replaced him with a Hollywood B Actor who played his part with panache. America is better than the rest, he told the people. We have nothing to worry about. We aren’t really in our long, dark night of the soul. It is “morning in America.”

In 2015, as Trump makes perfectly clear, America has sufficient worry and anxiety to lose a lifetime of sleep. “The bridges are falling apart. The roads are falling apart. The airports look like hell. Look, I come back from places like Qatar, Dubai, where everything is unbelievable. Then, we land at LaGuardia or Kennedy or LAX, and it’s Third World,” Trump recently told a visibly irritated Megyn Kelly. One doesn’t need to own golf courses all over the world to appreciate the accuracy of Trump’s indictment. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave US infrastructure the grade of D+. The “cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of doing something,” the report warned. Further deterioration could result in “everyday things simply stopping to work in the way people expect.” The horror show of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated with bodies floating in the streets, and children living in the stench and squalor of the Superdome, that damaged and declining infrastructure is not only an aesthetic assault, but an attack on human life.

“Don’t believe 5.6 percent,” Trump declared during his announcement as a candidate for the Presidency, “The real unemployment rate is 18 to 20 percent.” The steady dismantlement of the middle class, and the escalating war on the poor, makes the economic picture of America as bleak one of the closing art museums in Detroit. Many critics mocked Trump for “inflating” the “real unemployment rate,” acting as if he were a lying lunatic, inventing numbers on the spot. The Department of Labor, however, in a number rarely reported, places the unemployment and underemployment rate at 12.6 percent. The unemployment rate more than doubles, when evaluators take into account workers “marginally attached to the labor force,” meaning those whose lives are caught in the chaotic struggle of working a few hours a week at a miserly rate when they are in desperate need of full time jobs. As if the 12.6 figure was not already disturbing and alarming, many economists place the number higher by attempting to include the increasingly difficult to determine amount of Americans so discouraged by lack of employment options, they’ve stopped searching for work, and have vanished from the labor force. Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and award winning columnist for The Hill, estimates that the national unemployment rate is actually 18 percent. The Mercatus Center, an economic think tank at George Mason University, makes a slightly lower, but similar estimation.

Quarreling over the exact number of unemployed or “marginally attached workers” in America will do little to ease the troubles or improve the lives of the “nickel and dimed” workers Barbara Ehrenreich brilliantly and bracingly studied in her book on the working poor. 25 million workers, according to Oxfam America, toil for, at least, 30 hours a week, and can barely pay the rent, keep the water running, and fill the refrigerator. Their lives are a daily struggle against the misery of privation, and they are one unfortunate incident – an accident, a child getting sick, a car breaking down – from slipping out of sight into the back alleys and basements of America’s underclass and underside.

Even if Americans prefer the boosterism of having their leaders endlessly tell them they are perfect, at the levels most immediate and intuitive, many of them cannot deny that something is rotten in the state of America. As Howard Dean put it when he was in the middle of his campaign in 2004, “Not even Fox News can convince you that you have a job when you’re unemployed.” Young college graduates, buried in debt and unable to find placement in a career that enables them to pay down the debt, know there is something wrong, as do working parents who barely survive, counting the minutes in their Sisyphean climb from paycheck to paycheck. Senior citizens unable to even dream of retirement are equally incapable of living in denial. More and more Americans fear that Trump is correct when he proclaims, “the American dream is dead.”

Walking down the street of a major American city, one can often feel a sense of spiritual defeat. Crowding those streets are people who, according to the American Sociological Association, report having fewer “close friends” with every survey, people who are increasingly isolated and alienated from any sense of community, and who take more anti-depressants than any other people in the world, and self-medicate with high rates of alcoholism, drug dependency, compulsive gambling.

When Donald Trump, a billionaire in a culture that consistently and foolishly equates wealth with wisdom, describes the death of the American dream or compares the US to Third World nations, he alone on the Republican side speaks to the anxiety in the American spirit and the panic in the American heart. Many uninformed but intuitive Americans praise Trump for his forthrightness, and it is likely his refusal to act as if America is an Edenic paradise, that resonates with them. Americans have problems, and unlike Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, Trump is talking about those problems.

The fascinating and dangerous trick of Trump is that he offers an escape from responsibility. Americans, especially those conservatives who preach personal responsibility, are terrified of accepting responsibility for any American problem, and resist it like healthy people resist pneumonia infections. With cynical mastery of demagoguery, Trump tells frightened and disillusioned Americans exactly what they want to hear: None of it is their fault.

Yes, the American middle class is barely existent. Yes, the American poor are barely alive. Yes, American culture is violent beyond comparison with massacres happening on almost a weekly basis. Yes, American institutions are dysfunctional and American cities are in decay. But none of it is America’s fault. It is all the fault of the Chinese, the Japanese, the OPEC nations, and most of all, the Mexicans who are “killing us in trade” and “killing us at the border.”

The reasons that America’s economy and culture are disintegrating right before the eyes of anyone willing to remove the red, white, and blue blindfold are American greed, selfishness, corruption, and arrogance. Rather than learning from other nations, America demonizes or ignores them. Rather than learning from its own tragedies and traumas – the 9/11 attack, Hurricane Katrina, the financial collapse of 2008 – America doubles down on the sources of those nightmares: war and military aggression, neglect of infrastructure and abuse of the poor, neoliberal deregulation and financialization of the economy. Given an opportunity for introspection, Americans will always look outward. The problem is never America. It is the Soviet Union. It is Islam. It is somebody or something else.

Donald Trump might correctly identify many American diseases, but he offers no real prescription for healing. In the words of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, “he has no ideas, only barstool eruptions.” Trump’s campaign amounts to nothing more than xenophobia. China, Japan, OPEC, and Mexico are responsible for all of America’s failures, and America is forever granted immunity for creating an economy that works only for people with bankrolls similar to Trump, and for creating a culture that produces massive amounts of loneliness and emptiness.

It is easy to ridicule and belittle Trump, and the hatred he expresses towards immigrants makes him worthy of it. It is harder to believe that Trump will quickly go away, as many pundits predicted when he declared his candidacy. Trump, and the ugly lines he recites with skill, is right out of American central casting. There is always an appetite in America for someone who scapegoats foreigners as the fault of everything in our society, and there is never a shortage of xenophobia. Whether or not Trump, the chief clown in the clown car of the GOP, wins the Republican nomination, his appeal to the nativist impulse in America will ensure a long stay, should he want it, in American political discourse.

When President Carter addressed the “fundamental threat to American democracy” and spoke honestly about his country’s problems, he demonstrated strong and courageous leadership by explaining that the “crisis of confidence” presents “two paths to choose.” One was a path of “truth seeking,” “common purpose,” and “true freedom” in the form of communal investment and involvement – a “spiritual restoration” rather than material fixation. The other path, “a certain route to failure,” was “fragmentation and self-interest” – “The mistaken idea of freedom as the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.”

America chose the route to failure, and has paid for it ever since. Only from the vantage point of a ditch is someone like Donald Trump able to look like a leader.

The fascinating and dangerous trick of Trump is that he offers an escape from responsibility.

“The American dream is dead” and “the US is going to hell” do not make for inspirational campaign slogans. It is difficult to imagine either one decorating a vehicular bumper next to adhesive flags and yellow ribbons. Somehow through his sheer lunacy, paranoid xenophobia, and buffoonish and boorish antics, the Vaudevillian billionaire Donald Trump, against almost all predictions, has managed to detonate the boring Republican primary, and place among the wreckage the typically taboo and unutterable idea that America is a country in decline.

Historically, Americans have preferred optimism, smiles, and forecasts of long days under clear skies in a perfect climate. Campaign strategists have often advised their candidates to avoid using the word “problems” in speeches and interviews. America does not have “problems,” they explain. It has “challenges.” When President Carter, who unlike Trump is not a maniac, but a man of great wisdom, suggested that American greed, isolation, and materialism ushered into the culture a “crisis of confidence,” the press, his Republican opponents, and many Democratic allies excoriated him. The public replaced him with a Hollywood B Actor who played his part with panache. America is better than the rest, he told the people. We have nothing to worry about. We aren’t really in our long, dark night of the soul. It is “morning in America.”

In 2015, as Trump makes perfectly clear, America has sufficient worry and anxiety to lose a lifetime of sleep. “The bridges are falling apart. The roads are falling apart. The airports look like hell. Look, I come back from places like Qatar, Dubai, where everything is unbelievable. Then, we land at LaGuardia or Kennedy or LAX, and it’s Third World,” Trump recently told a visibly irritated Megyn Kelly. One doesn’t need to own golf courses all over the world to appreciate the accuracy of Trump’s indictment. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave US infrastructure the grade of D+. The “cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of doing something,” the report warned. Further deterioration could result in “everyday things simply stopping to work in the way people expect.” The horror show of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated with bodies floating in the streets, and children living in the stench and squalor of the Superdome, that damaged and declining infrastructure is not only an aesthetic assault, but an attack on human life.

“Don’t believe 5.6 percent,” Trump declared during his announcement as a candidate for the Presidency, “The real unemployment rate is 18 to 20 percent.” The steady dismantlement of the middle class, and the escalating war on the poor, makes the economic picture of America as bleak one of the closing art museums in Detroit. Many critics mocked Trump for “inflating” the “real unemployment rate,” acting as if he were a lying lunatic, inventing numbers on the spot. The Department of Labor, however, in a number rarely reported, places the unemployment and underemployment rate at 12.6 percent. The unemployment rate more than doubles, when evaluators take into account workers “marginally attached to the labor force,” meaning those whose lives are caught in the chaotic struggle of working a few hours a week at a miserly rate when they are in desperate need of full time jobs. As if the 12.6 figure was not already disturbing and alarming, many economists place the number higher by attempting to include the increasingly difficult to determine amount of Americans so discouraged by lack of employment options, they’ve stopped searching for work, and have vanished from the labor force. Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and award winning columnist for The Hill, estimates that the national unemployment rate is actually 18 percent. The Mercatus Center, an economic think tank at George Mason University, makes a slightly lower, but similar estimation.

Quarreling over the exact number of unemployed or “marginally attached workers” in America will do little to ease the troubles or improve the lives of the “nickel and dimed” workers Barbara Ehrenreich brilliantly and bracingly studied in her book on the working poor. 25 million workers, according to Oxfam America, toil for, at least, 30 hours a week, and can barely pay the rent, keep the water running, and fill the refrigerator. Their lives are a daily struggle against the misery of privation, and they are one unfortunate incident – an accident, a child getting sick, a car breaking down – from slipping out of sight into the back alleys and basements of America’s underclass and underside.

Even if Americans prefer the boosterism of having their leaders endlessly tell them they are perfect, at the levels most immediate and intuitive, many of them cannot deny that something is rotten in the state of America. As Howard Dean put it when he was in the middle of his campaign in 2004, “Not even Fox News can convince you that you have a job when you’re unemployed.” Young college graduates, buried in debt and unable to find placement in a career that enables them to pay down the debt, know there is something wrong, as do working parents who barely survive, counting the minutes in their Sisyphean climb from paycheck to paycheck. Senior citizens unable to even dream of retirement are equally incapable of living in denial. More and more Americans fear that Trump is correct when he proclaims, “the American dream is dead.”

Walking down the street of a major American city, one can often feel a sense of spiritual defeat. Crowding those streets are people who, according to the American Sociological Association, report having fewer “close friends” with every survey, people who are increasingly isolated and alienated from any sense of community, and who take more anti-depressants than any other people in the world, and self-medicate with high rates of alcoholism, drug dependency, compulsive gambling.

When Donald Trump, a billionaire in a culture that consistently and foolishly equates wealth with wisdom, describes the death of the American dream or compares the US to Third World nations, he alone on the Republican side speaks to the anxiety in the American spirit and the panic in the American heart. Many uninformed but intuitive Americans praise Trump for his forthrightness, and it is likely his refusal to act as if America is an Edenic paradise, that resonates with them. Americans have problems, and unlike Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, Trump is talking about those problems.

The fascinating and dangerous trick of Trump is that he offers an escape from responsibility. Americans, especially those conservatives who preach personal responsibility, are terrified of accepting responsibility for any American problem, and resist it like healthy people resist pneumonia infections. With cynical mastery of demagoguery, Trump tells frightened and disillusioned Americans exactly what they want to hear: None of it is their fault.

Yes, the American middle class is barely existent. Yes, the American poor are barely alive. Yes, American culture is violent beyond comparison with massacres happening on almost a weekly basis. Yes, American institutions are dysfunctional and American cities are in decay. But none of it is America’s fault. It is all the fault of the Chinese, the Japanese, the OPEC nations, and most of all, the Mexicans who are “killing us in trade” and “killing us at the border.”

The reasons that America’s economy and culture are disintegrating right before the eyes of anyone willing to remove the red, white, and blue blindfold are American greed, selfishness, corruption, and arrogance. Rather than learning from other nations, America demonizes or ignores them. Rather than learning from its own tragedies and traumas – the 9/11 attack, Hurricane Katrina, the financial collapse of 2008 – America doubles down on the sources of those nightmares: war and military aggression, neglect of infrastructure and abuse of the poor, neoliberal deregulation and financialization of the economy. Given an opportunity for introspection, Americans will always look outward. The problem is never America. It is the Soviet Union. It is Islam. It is somebody or something else.

Donald Trump might correctly identify many American diseases, but he offers no real prescription for healing. In the words of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, “he has no ideas, only barstool eruptions.” Trump’s campaign amounts to nothing more than xenophobia. China, Japan, OPEC, and Mexico are responsible for all of America’s failures, and America is forever granted immunity for creating an economy that works only for people with bankrolls similar to Trump, and for creating a culture that produces massive amounts of loneliness and emptiness.

It is easy to ridicule and belittle Trump, and the hatred he expresses towards immigrants makes him worthy of it. It is harder to believe that Trump will quickly go away, as many pundits predicted when he declared his candidacy. Trump, and the ugly lines he recites with skill, is right out of American central casting. There is always an appetite in America for someone who scapegoats foreigners as the fault of everything in our society, and there is never a shortage of xenophobia. Whether or not Trump, the chief clown in the clown car of the GOP, wins the Republican nomination, his appeal to the nativist impulse in America will ensure a long stay, should he want it, in American political discourse.

When President Carter addressed the “fundamental threat to American democracy” and spoke honestly about his country’s problems, he demonstrated strong and courageous leadership by explaining that the “crisis of confidence” presents “two paths to choose.” One was a path of “truth seeking,” “common purpose,” and “true freedom” in the form of communal investment and involvement – a “spiritual restoration” rather than material fixation. The other path, “a certain route to failure,” was “fragmentation and self-interest” – “The mistaken idea of freedom as the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.”

America chose the route to failure, and has paid for it ever since. Only from the vantage point of a ditch is someone like Donald Trump able to look like a leader.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/food/big-food-wants-you-believe-these-7-products-are-healthyBig Food Wants You to Believe These 7 Products Are Healthyhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104353850/0/alternet~Big-Food-Wants-You-to-Believe-These-Products-Are-Healthy

They're not—and their supposed benefits are readily available in actual food.

Science has come a long way toward identifying what kills us, but we are still a longer way from knowing what keeps us going. It is in the murky gray areas that charlatans lurk, peddling snake oil remedies they promise will perform miracles. And those charlatans aren’t necessarily shady, bewhiskered characters. More often they are huge corporations with the appearance of respectability, who convince millions of people that their products work. Scarcely a moment goes by when we aren’t being bombarded with messages from television, the Internet, print media, and radio, courtesy of Big Food. Many of those messages tell us that all we need to do to stay healthy, live longer and maintain that youthful glow is to buy their porducts.

You know you’ve hit the big time when Coca-Cola wants a piece of the action. In 2013, Coke bought Zico, a leading purveyor of coconut water, that slightly sweet, slightly nutty tasting liquid drawn from inside still-green coconuts. Not to be outdone, Pepsi peddles O.N.E. coconut water, and along with the independent Vita Coco and celebrity shills like Rihanna and Jessica Alba, coconut water is a half-billion-dollar industry and growing. The health claims are numerous. Low calorie, fat-free, high in potassium, a hydrating machine chock full of electrolytes.

To be truthful, coconut water has a big advantage over Gatorade and other “sports” drinks or sodas in one area. Those beverages are virtual sugar bombs in a bottle. Coconut water is relatively low in sugar. Still, coconut water is expensive, and a serving contains 60 calories, enough to pack on the pounds if you are chugging it. While it is an effective hydrator for an athlete who perspires heavily, your body would do equally well or better with lots of cheap, free water. A 2012 study funded by Vita Coco concluded that neither sports drinks or coconut water are any better than H2O. Do the math. A banana and a glass of water: 20 cents. A bottle of coconut water: $2.

2. Vitamin-infused water.

Vitamins and water. What could be bad? Coca-Cola (again!) agreed, and anted up over $4 billion to buy VitaminWater back in 2007. Lifewater, Smartwater and a host of other competitive waters have flooded the market since, all claiming health benefits that are dubious at best. Still, when everybody’s favorite daytime talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres, or “Friends” friend Jennifer Aniston, or star basketball player Dwight Howard, proclaim the wonders of vitamin-infused water, who can argue?

Then again, there was that pesky class-action lawsuit against VitaminWater, settled in 2014, in which the company was accused of fraudulently marketing the beverage as a health drink. It seems that a bottle of VitaminWater contains almost as much sugar as a can of Coke. And despite all the claims otherwise, there is little evidence that vitamins cure anything other than rare and exotic diseases like scurvy and beri-beri (which are caused by vitamin deficiencies). So if you have scurvy, by all means chug a bottle of VitaminWater, although an orange would be a lot cheaper. Otherwise, we are all better off getting our vitamins from real foods, not sugar water.

3. Nutritional snack bars.

Advertisements for nutritional and protein snack bars invariably display sexy women in tight-fitting exercise clothes or muscular men with bulging, well-defined abs. Who wouldn’t want to join that club? Marketed as a smart and healthy way to skip meals, slim down, bulk up, and live the healthy life, health bars are a $2 billion industry. Of course the “health” part is disputable. Kind bars, which have sold more than a billion bars since 2004, were recently warned by the FDA that the bars do not meet the standard of the definition of “healthy.” Several of the bars were too high in saturated fat, and the dark chocolate did not provide enough antioxidant power to merit the label “antioxidant-rich.”

In general, nutritional bars contain a high dose of sugar in some format. (Don’t be fooled by the type of sweetener used. Sugar is sugar, whether it's granulated white sugar or agave nectar or honey.) The fat content in the bars is often high, and the amount of calories and protein in them can be much higher than you need.

4. Granola.

Ah, granola. Nuts, dried fruit, whole grain goodness. Boxes rich with the color of wheat fields and oats and dripping honey. And sugar. And fat. A lot of it. A quarter cup of typical granola has 4 grams of sugar and 5 grams of fat. Quaker Oats 100% Natural Oats and Honey contains almost 7 grams of fat and over 13 grams of sugar in a half cup. And did we mention Quaker Oats is owned by a soda company (Pepsi)? Granola is a decent source of fiber, but most of the commercial ones are too sweet and too artery-clogging. If you like a little crunch in your breakfast, add a little granola to some plain nonfat Greek yogurt.

5. Fruit yogurt.

Low-fat fruit yogurts have the reputation of being a healthy breakfast or snack, but buyer beware. Plain yogurt is a terrific healthy food, an excellent source of protein, and more importantly, good source of the gut bacteria that help keep your immune system happy. Unfortunately, processed food companies like General Mills, producer of Yoplait yogurt, muddy the health benefits. In 2013 General Mills settled a class-action lawsuit against it for making unproven health claims about Yoplait and its digestive benefits. Worse though, is the product itself. No one would eat a Twinkie and say it was healthy. Yet Yoplait has more sugar per serving than the cream-filled sponge cake snack (19 grams of sugar per Twinkie vs. 26 grams for Yoplait).

And Yoplait is not the only culprit. Dannon yogurt, 24 grams of sugar. Activia, 19 grams. Even Stonyfield Organic tops out at 29 grams. The culprit is all that gooey so-called fruit at the bottom of the yogurt cup. Not so much fruit, lots of sugar. Like five teaspoons worth. (Here's another good reason to avoid Yoplait: for years wildlife rescuers have been asking General Mills to change the design of Yoplait cups, which are responsible for suffocating skunks and other small mammals who get their heads trapped in the unusually shaped cup. Despite continuing wildlife deaths across the nation, General Mills refuses to budge.)

6. Almond milk.

The non-dairy milk industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, as the stories of the horrors of factory farming leak out, combined with the search for a lactose-free alternative. Soy milk, hemp milk and other vegetable-based alternatives have grown to a $2 billion combined industry, but none has grown so much as almond milk, the leader at over $700 million. Almond milk corporations like Whitewave and Blue Diamond have extolled the wonders of almond milk, and it is a fact that almonds are good for you. But almond milk? Not so much.

An ounce of actual almonds contains as much protein as an egg, as much fiber as a banana and as much good fat as half an avocado. A serving of almond milk contains just one gram of protein and fiber and five grams of fat. Almond milk is composed mainly of water, along with a small handful of ground-up almonds mixed in. Not exactly a nutritional powerhouse. The calcium and other nutrients are mostly added in after the fact, so what you are getting is basically some cloudy water with a vitamin pill dissolved in it, plus some thickeners and other flavor enhancers to make it palatable. In these days of California (where 80% of almonds are grown) water shortages, it takes over a gallon of water to grow a single almond, making almond milk an environmental thorn.

7. Omega-3 enhanced foods.

There is some evidence that omega-3 fatty acids play a role in reducing the incidence of heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other life-threatening illnesses. No wonder food corporations jumped on the bandwagon and began adding omega-3s to their food products. Land-o-Lakes “All-Natural” Eggs, Horizon Organic Chocolate Milk, Kashi Go Lean Crunch cereal, Quaker Oats Fiber and Omega-3 granola bars, on and on.

Of course many of these products are enhanced not with DHA and EPA omega-3 (the fatty acids that seem to be protective), but with ALA omega-3, which has not much compelling evidence of benefit. Plus some of the products are loaded with sugar. The Center for Science in the Public Interest recommends that if you want your omega-3s, you should get them from natural sources like salmon, which has them in abundance. A six-ounce serving of salmon contains 100 times the amount of good DHA and EPA omega-3s as a serving of DHA-enhanced foods like yogurt or milk.

They're not—and their supposed benefits are readily available in actual food.

Science has come a long way toward identifying what kills us, but we are still a longer way from knowing what keeps us going. It is in the murky gray areas that charlatans lurk, peddling snake oil remedies they promise will perform miracles. And those charlatans aren’t necessarily shady, bewhiskered characters. More often they are huge corporations with the appearance of respectability, who convince millions of people that their products work. Scarcely a moment goes by when we aren’t being bombarded with messages from television, the Internet, print media, and radio, courtesy of Big Food. Many of those messages tell us that all we need to do to stay healthy, live longer and maintain that youthful glow is to buy their porducts.

You know you’ve hit the big time when Coca-Cola wants a piece of the action. In 2013, Coke bought Zico, a leading purveyor of coconut water, that slightly sweet, slightly nutty tasting liquid drawn from inside still-green coconuts. Not to be outdone, Pepsi peddles O.N.E. coconut water, and along with the independent Vita Coco and celebrity shills like Rihanna and Jessica Alba, coconut water is a half-billion-dollar industry and growing. The health claims are numerous. Low calorie, fat-free, high in potassium, a hydrating machine chock full of electrolytes.

To be truthful, coconut water has a big advantage over Gatorade and other “sports” drinks or sodas in one area. Those beverages are virtual sugar bombs in a bottle. Coconut water is relatively low in sugar. Still, coconut water is expensive, and a serving contains 60 calories, enough to pack on the pounds if you are chugging it. While it is an effective hydrator for an athlete who perspires heavily, your body would do equally well or better with lots of cheap, free water. A 2012 study funded by Vita Coco concluded that neither sports drinks or coconut water are any better than H2O. Do the math. A banana and a glass of water: 20 cents. A bottle of coconut water: $2.

2. Vitamin-infused water.

Vitamins and water. What could be bad? Coca-Cola (again!) agreed, and anted up over $4 billion to buy VitaminWater back in 2007. Lifewater, Smartwater and a host of other competitive waters have flooded the market since, all claiming health benefits that are dubious at best. Still, when everybody’s favorite daytime talk show host, Ellen DeGeneres, or “Friends” friend Jennifer Aniston, or star basketball player Dwight Howard, proclaim the wonders of vitamin-infused water, who can argue?

Then again, there was that pesky class-action lawsuit against VitaminWater, settled in 2014, in which the company was accused of fraudulently marketing the beverage as a health drink. It seems that a bottle of VitaminWater contains almost as much sugar as a can of Coke. And despite all the claims otherwise, there is little evidence that vitamins cure anything other than rare and exotic diseases like scurvy and beri-beri (which are caused by vitamin deficiencies). So if you have scurvy, by all means chug a bottle of VitaminWater, although an orange would be a lot cheaper. Otherwise, we are all better off getting our vitamins from real foods, not sugar water.

3. Nutritional snack bars.

Advertisements for nutritional and protein snack bars invariably display sexy women in tight-fitting exercise clothes or muscular men with bulging, well-defined abs. Who wouldn’t want to join that club? Marketed as a smart and healthy way to skip meals, slim down, bulk up, and live the healthy life, health bars are a $2 billion industry. Of course the “health” part is disputable. Kind bars, which have sold more than a billion bars since 2004, were recently warned by the FDA that the bars do not meet the standard of the definition of “healthy.” Several of the bars were too high in saturated fat, and the dark chocolate did not provide enough antioxidant power to merit the label “antioxidant-rich.”

In general, nutritional bars contain a high dose of sugar in some format. (Don’t be fooled by the type of sweetener used. Sugar is sugar, whether it's granulated white sugar or agave nectar or honey.) The fat content in the bars is often high, and the amount of calories and protein in them can be much higher than you need.

4. Granola.

Ah, granola. Nuts, dried fruit, whole grain goodness. Boxes rich with the color of wheat fields and oats and dripping honey. And sugar. And fat. A lot of it. A quarter cup of typical granola has 4 grams of sugar and 5 grams of fat. Quaker Oats 100% Natural Oats and Honey contains almost 7 grams of fat and over 13 grams of sugar in a half cup. And did we mention Quaker Oats is owned by a soda company (Pepsi)? Granola is a decent source of fiber, but most of the commercial ones are too sweet and too artery-clogging. If you like a little crunch in your breakfast, add a little granola to some plain nonfat Greek yogurt.

5. Fruit yogurt.

Low-fat fruit yogurts have the reputation of being a healthy breakfast or snack, but buyer beware. Plain yogurt is a terrific healthy food, an excellent source of protein, and more importantly, good source of the gut bacteria that help keep your immune system happy. Unfortunately, processed food companies like General Mills, producer of Yoplait yogurt, muddy the health benefits. In 2013 General Mills settled a class-action lawsuit against it for making unproven health claims about Yoplait and its digestive benefits. Worse though, is the product itself. No one would eat a Twinkie and say it was healthy. Yet Yoplait has more sugar per serving than the cream-filled sponge cake snack (19 grams of sugar per Twinkie vs. 26 grams for Yoplait).

And Yoplait is not the only culprit. Dannon yogurt, 24 grams of sugar. Activia, 19 grams. Even Stonyfield Organic tops out at 29 grams. The culprit is all that gooey so-called fruit at the bottom of the yogurt cup. Not so much fruit, lots of sugar. Like five teaspoons worth. (Here's another good reason to avoid Yoplait: for years wildlife rescuers have been asking General Mills to change the design of Yoplait cups, which are responsible for suffocating skunks and other small mammals who get their heads trapped in the unusually shaped cup. Despite continuing wildlife deaths across the nation, General Mills refuses to budge.)

6. Almond milk.

The non-dairy milk industry has grown by leaps and bounds in the past decade, as the stories of the horrors of factory farming leak out, combined with the search for a lactose-free alternative. Soy milk, hemp milk and other vegetable-based alternatives have grown to a $2 billion combined industry, but none has grown so much as almond milk, the leader at over $700 million. Almond milk corporations like Whitewave and Blue Diamond have extolled the wonders of almond milk, and it is a fact that almonds are good for you. But almond milk? Not so much.

An ounce of actual almonds contains as much protein as an egg, as much fiber as a banana and as much good fat as half an avocado. A serving of almond milk contains just one gram of protein and fiber and five grams of fat. Almond milk is composed mainly of water, along with a small handful of ground-up almonds mixed in. Not exactly a nutritional powerhouse. The calcium and other nutrients are mostly added in after the fact, so what you are getting is basically some cloudy water with a vitamin pill dissolved in it, plus some thickeners and other flavor enhancers to make it palatable. In these days of California (where 80% of almonds are grown) water shortages, it takes over a gallon of water to grow a single almond, making almond milk an environmental thorn.

7. Omega-3 enhanced foods.

There is some evidence that omega-3 fatty acids play a role in reducing the incidence of heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, and other life-threatening illnesses. No wonder food corporations jumped on the bandwagon and began adding omega-3s to their food products. Land-o-Lakes “All-Natural” Eggs, Horizon Organic Chocolate Milk, Kashi Go Lean Crunch cereal, Quaker Oats Fiber and Omega-3 granola bars, on and on.

Of course many of these products are enhanced not with DHA and EPA omega-3 (the fatty acids that seem to be protective), but with ALA omega-3, which has not much compelling evidence of benefit. Plus some of the products are loaded with sugar. The Center for Science in the Public Interest recommends that if you want your omega-3s, you should get them from natural sources like salmon, which has them in abundance. A six-ounce serving of salmon contains 100 times the amount of good DHA and EPA omega-3s as a serving of DHA-enhanced foods like yogurt or milk.

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http://www.alternet.org/sc-cop-killed-teen-two-shots-back-during-weed-bust-and-didnt-even-report-it-attorneySC Cop Killed Teen With Two Shots To the Back During Weed Bust — And Didn’t Even Report It: Attorneyhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104513540/0/alternet~SC-Cop-Killed-Teen-With-Two-Shots-To-the-Back-During-Weed-Bust-%e2%80%94-And-Didn%e2%80%99t-Even-Report-It-Attorney

Not the way to handle a fatal shooting.

Police shot and killed a South Carolina man during an undercover marijuana sting — and his family’s attorney said evidence shows the 19-year-old was shot twice in the back from near-point blank range.

Zachary Hammond was shot to death Sunday night in a Hardee’s parking lot, where an undercover officer had arranged a drug buy to lure 23-year-old Tori Morton into an arrest, reported Greenville Online.

The Seneca police officer approached the car, which was driven by Hammond, with his weapon drawn — which police said was common practice during drug arrests.

A police report shows the officer, whose name was not released, executed a search warrant and found a bag of pot in the car.

Media reports have indicated the marijuana was found after the shooting, but an attorney hired by Hammond’s parents said he has not been able to confirm whether that was true.

The police chief, John Covington, said the officer felt threatened because Hammond drove right at him and fired his gun into the open driver’s side window, killing him.

Covington said the officer may have pushed away from the moving car before shooting, and he denied the shots were fired from behind.

The report makes no mention of the shooting, but the police chief said the officer would file a statement about it at some point.

Eric Bland, an attorney for Hammond’s said the autopsy showed the teen was shot in the back and the car was not moving.

The autopsy revealed the first shot entered Hammond’s left rear shoulder, said Bland, and the second one entered five inches away at a downward angle into his side from behind — cutting through the man’s heart and lungs before exiting his lower right side.

“The shots were so close in proximity to each other that it would be physically impossible unless the car was stopped and the officer came up very close to an open window,” Bland said. “Picture a car going 20 miles an hour and I’m fortunate enough to get a shot off, and I hit you — there’s no way I can get the second shot if the car’s going 20 miles an hour.”

The Oconee County coroner, Karl Addis, issued a statement Tuesday that shows Hammond died from a gunshot wound to the upper torso but does not specify whether the bullet was fired from the front or back.

The police chief dismissed Bland’s description of the autopsy findings and said the case appeared headed toward a lawsuit.

“The attorney wasn’t there, either,” Covington said. “He’s got to put his spin on things. His clients are the parents and they’re grieving, I understand that. My heart goes out to them.”

The officer has been placed on administrative leave during an investigation by the State Law Enforcement Division.

Morton, who was eating ice cream when the officer approached and was not injured in the incident, was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia and faces a possible $500 fine.

Bland has requested the state Attorney General to call for a statewide grand jury investigation of the shooting.

“This is a 19-year-old kid without a weapon in his car, clearly in the Hardee’s parking lot on a date, and within five minutes he has two shots that appear to be in his back and his side, from an officer shooting him from the back — and he’s dead and this family needs answers,” the attorney said.

Police shot and killed a South Carolina man during an undercover marijuana sting — and his family’s attorney said evidence shows the 19-year-old was shot twice in the back from near-point blank range.

Zachary Hammond was shot to death Sunday night in a Hardee’s parking lot, where an undercover officer had arranged a drug buy to lure 23-year-old Tori Morton into an arrest, reported Greenville Online.

The Seneca police officer approached the car, which was driven by Hammond, with his weapon drawn — which police said was common practice during drug arrests.

A police report shows the officer, whose name was not released, executed a search warrant and found a bag of pot in the car.

Media reports have indicated the marijuana was found after the shooting, but an attorney hired by Hammond’s parents said he has not been able to confirm whether that was true.

The police chief, John Covington, said the officer felt threatened because Hammond drove right at him and fired his gun into the open driver’s side window, killing him.

Covington said the officer may have pushed away from the moving car before shooting, and he denied the shots were fired from behind.

The report makes no mention of the shooting, but the police chief said the officer would file a statement about it at some point.

Eric Bland, an attorney for Hammond’s said the autopsy showed the teen was shot in the back and the car was not moving.

The autopsy revealed the first shot entered Hammond’s left rear shoulder, said Bland, and the second one entered five inches away at a downward angle into his side from behind — cutting through the man’s heart and lungs before exiting his lower right side.

“The shots were so close in proximity to each other that it would be physically impossible unless the car was stopped and the officer came up very close to an open window,” Bland said. “Picture a car going 20 miles an hour and I’m fortunate enough to get a shot off, and I hit you — there’s no way I can get the second shot if the car’s going 20 miles an hour.”

The Oconee County coroner, Karl Addis, issued a statement Tuesday that shows Hammond died from a gunshot wound to the upper torso but does not specify whether the bullet was fired from the front or back.

The police chief dismissed Bland’s description of the autopsy findings and said the case appeared headed toward a lawsuit.

“The attorney wasn’t there, either,” Covington said. “He’s got to put his spin on things. His clients are the parents and they’re grieving, I understand that. My heart goes out to them.”

The officer has been placed on administrative leave during an investigation by the State Law Enforcement Division.

Morton, who was eating ice cream when the officer approached and was not injured in the incident, was arrested for possession of drug paraphernalia and faces a possible $500 fine.

Bland has requested the state Attorney General to call for a statewide grand jury investigation of the shooting.

“This is a 19-year-old kid without a weapon in his car, clearly in the Hardee’s parking lot on a date, and within five minutes he has two shots that appear to be in his back and his side, from an officer shooting him from the back — and he’s dead and this family needs answers,” the attorney said.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/jimmy-carter-american-democracy-has-been-subverted-oligarchy-unlimited-political-briberyJimmy Carter: American Democracy Has Been Subverted into an 'Oligarchy' with 'Unlimited Political Bribery'http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104513542/0/alternet~Jimmy-Carter-American-Democracy-Has-Been-Subverted-into-an-Oligarchy-with-Unlimited-Political-Bribery

"The incumbents, Democrats, and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves."

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines an 'oligarchy' as: "A government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes."

Former President Jimmy Carter had some choice words for our form of government, post-Citizen's United, on my radio program this week.. When I asked him his thoughts on the state of American politics since five right-wing justices on the US Supreme Court opened the doors to "unlimited money" in our political discourse via Citizens United, Carter was blunt and to the point.

“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.

"So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over."

I asked him then what might change things, and he said it would take a “horrible, disgraceful” corruption scandal (think Nixon) that would "turn the public against it [Citizens United], and maybe even the Congress and the Supreme Court."

Carter added, "The incumbents, Democrats, and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger, so it benefits both parties.”

"In addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices, there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter [this decision]. Corporate ‘domination’ of electioneering can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy.

"When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing.

"The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders ‘call the tune’ and a reduced ‘willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.’ To the extent that corporations are allowed to exert undue influence in electoral races, the speech of the eventual winners of those races may also be chilled.

"Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation. On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to 'hold officials accountable to the people,’ and disserve the goal of a public debate that is 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.' At the least, I stress again, a legislature is entitled to credit these concerns and to take tailored measures in response."

President Carter is right. Corporate interests (oil companies, for example, are why Republicans and a few bought-out Democrats deny climate change) and the billionaires who got rich off their corporations have seized control of most of our government.

One solution is a simple constitutional amendment that makes it clear that corporations are not, and don’t have the rights of, human persons; and that reverses the 1976 Buckley decision by saying explicitly that spending money on politics is a behavior that can be regulated, not a form of “speech” with broad immunity under the First Amendment.

Politicians are catching on. Senator Bernie Sanders, who aspires to President Carter’s old job, has not only endorsed such an amendment (he’s alone in this among all presidential candidates) but has even introduced a version of it several times into Congress.

"The incumbents, Democrats, and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves."

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines an 'oligarchy' as: "A government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes."

Former President Jimmy Carter had some choice words for our form of government, post-Citizen's United, on my radio program this week.. When I asked him his thoughts on the state of American politics since five right-wing justices on the US Supreme Court opened the doors to "unlimited money" in our political discourse via Citizens United, Carter was blunt and to the point.

“It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. senators and congress members.

"So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over."

I asked him then what might change things, and he said it would take a “horrible, disgraceful” corruption scandal (think Nixon) that would "turn the public against it [Citizens United], and maybe even the Congress and the Supreme Court."

Carter added, "The incumbents, Democrats, and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger, so it benefits both parties.”

"In addition to this immediate drowning out of noncorporate voices, there may be deleterious effects that follow soon thereafter [this decision]. Corporate ‘domination’ of electioneering can generate the impression that corporations dominate our democracy.

"When citizens turn on their televisions and radios before an election and hear only corporate electioneering, they may lose faith in their capacity, as citizens, to influence public policy. A Government captured by corporate interests, they may come to believe, will be neither responsive to their needs nor willing to give their views a fair hearing.

"The predictable result is cynicism and disenchantment: an increased perception that large spenders ‘call the tune’ and a reduced ‘willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.’ To the extent that corporations are allowed to exert undue influence in electoral races, the speech of the eventual winners of those races may also be chilled.

"Politicians who fear that a certain corporation can make or break their reelection chances may be cowed into silence about that corporation. On a variety of levels, unregulated corporate electioneering might diminish the ability of citizens to 'hold officials accountable to the people,’ and disserve the goal of a public debate that is 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.' At the least, I stress again, a legislature is entitled to credit these concerns and to take tailored measures in response."

President Carter is right. Corporate interests (oil companies, for example, are why Republicans and a few bought-out Democrats deny climate change) and the billionaires who got rich off their corporations have seized control of most of our government.

One solution is a simple constitutional amendment that makes it clear that corporations are not, and don’t have the rights of, human persons; and that reverses the 1976 Buckley decision by saying explicitly that spending money on politics is a behavior that can be regulated, not a form of “speech” with broad immunity under the First Amendment.

Politicians are catching on. Senator Bernie Sanders, who aspires to President Carter’s old job, has not only endorsed such an amendment (he’s alone in this among all presidential candidates) but has even introduced a version of it several times into Congress.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/direct-democracy-work-ten-states-pot-legalization-initiative-effortsThe Marijuana Legalization Express: 10 States That Could Vote on It Next Yearhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104155078/0/alternet~The-Marijuana-Legalization-Express-States-That-Could-Vote-on-It-Next-Year

After they count the ballots on election day next year, a whole lot of Americans could be living in legal marijuana states.

Marijuana is going to be part of the political conversation between now and Election Day 2016. Support for legalization is now consistently polling above 50% nationwide, four states and DC have already voted to legalize it, and activists in at least 10 states are doing their best to make pot an issue this time around.

In those 10 states, they're working to take marijuana legalization directly to the voters in the form of initiatives. Not all of those efforts will actually make the ballot—mass signature-gathering campaigns require not only enthusiasm but cold, hard cash to succeed—and not all of those that qualify will necessarily win, but in a handful of states, including the nation's most populous, the prospects for passing pot legalization next year look quite good.

Presidential contenders are already finding the question of pot legalization unavoidable. They're mostly finding the topic uncomfortable, with none—not even Rand Paul—embracing full-on legalization, most staking out middling positions, and some Republicans looking for traction by fervently opposing it. Just this week, Chris Christie vowed to undo legalization where it already exists if he is elected president.

It's worth noting that it is the initiative process that is enabling the process of ending pot prohibition. Only half the states have it—mostly west of the Mississippi—but the use of citizen initiatives has led the way first for medical marijuana legalization and now with outright legalization.

In the face of overwhelming support for medical marijuana, state legislators proved remarkably recalcitrant. It took five years after California voters made it the first medical marijuana state for Hawaii to become the first state to pass it at the legislature. Even now, with nearly half the states having approved some form of medical marijuana, getting such bills through legislatures is excruciatingly difficult, and results in overly restrictive and ineffective state programs.

It's been the same with legalization. Voters approved legalization via initiatives in Colorado and Washington in 2012 and Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia last year. But even in states with majorities or pluralities in favor of legalization, legalization bills haven't gotten passed.

Efforts are afoot at a number of statehouses, and one of them will eventually be the first to legislate legalization, maybe even next year (it's not outside the realm of possibility), but for now, if legalization is going to continue to expand, it's going to come thanks to the initiative states. In fact, marijuana policy reform is an issue on which elected officials have been so tin-eared and unresponsive to the will of the voters that their failure is an advertisement for the utility of direct democracy.

By the time the polls close on Election Day 2016, we could see the number of legalization states double and the number of Americans living free of pot prohibition quadruple to more than 60 million—or more. Attitudes on marijuana are shifting fast, and by this time next year, the prospects of even more states actually approving legalization could be even higher.

But right now, we have five states where the prospects of getting on the ballot and winning look good, three states where it looks iffy but could surprise, and four states where it looks like a long-shot next year.

Looking Good for Legalization

Arizona

A June Rocky Mountain Poll from the Behavioral Research Center has support for legalization at 53%, and Arizonans could find themselves having to decide which competing legalization proposal they like best.

The Marijuana Policy Project-backed Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or five grams of concentrates, as well as allow home grows of up to six plants per person, with a cap of 12 plants per household. The initiative also envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a tax of 15%. Localities could bar pot businesses or even home growing, but only upon a popular vote.

The second initiative, from Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or concentrates, as well as allow for home grows of up to 12 plants, and home growers could keep the fruits of their harvests. The initiative envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax on retail sales. It would allow localities to regulate, but not ban marijuana businesses.

Both campaigns are in the signature-gathering process. They will need 150,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2016 ballot and they have until next July to get them.

California

A May PPIC poll had support for legalization at 54%, and Californians have a variety of initiatives to choose from. At least six legalization initiatives have already been cleared for signature-gathering by state officials, but everybody is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That would be the much anticipated initiative from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, which represents many of the major players in the state, as well as deep-pocketed outside players from all the major drug reform groups. The coalition's initiative was delayed while it waited for the release of a report from Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy, led by pro-legalization Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). That report came out last week, and the coalition says it expects to have its initiative ready within a few weeks.

The delays in getting the initiative out and the signature-gathering campaign underway are going to put pressure on the campaign. To qualify for the ballot, initiatives must come up with some 366,000 valid voter signatures, and that takes time, as well as money. Most of the other initiatives don't have the money to make a serious run at signatures, but the coalition does. For all of the California legalization initiatives, the real hard deadline for signatures is February 4.

Maine

The most recent polling, a Public Policy Polling survey from 2013, had only a plurality (48% to 39%) favoring legalization, but that's nearly two years old, and if Maine is following national trends, support should only have increased since then. Maine is winnable.

This is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative has competition from local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize possession of up to an ounce of buds and allow for six-plant home grows. It would also create a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax above and beyond the state sales tax, and it would allow for marijuana social clubs as well as retail stores.

The competing initiative, from Legalize Maine, is a bit looser on possession and home grows, allowing up to 2.5 ounces and six mature and 12 immature plants. Unlike the MPP initiative, which would have the Alcohol Bureau regulate marijuana, this one would leave it to the Department of Agriculture. It would also allow for marijuana social clubs as well as pot shops and would impose a 10% flat sales tax.

Initiatives need 61,126 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. The campaigns have until next spring to get them in.

Massachusetts

A Suffolk/Boston Herald poll from February has support for legalization at 53% in the Bay State, where activists have since the turn of the century been laying the groundwork for legalization with a series of successful non-binding policy questions demonstrating public support, not to mention voting to approve medical marijuana in 2008 and decriminalization in 2012.

Like Arizona and Maine, Massachusetts is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative is being contested by local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is still in the initiative-drafting process and details of its initiative remain unknown.

Meanwhile, local activists organized as Bay State Repeal have come up with a very liberal initiative that would legalize possession and cultivation—without limits—and allow for marijuana farmers' markets and social clubs. This initiative would also create a system of licensed, regulated and taxed marijuana commerce.

Neither Massachusetts initiative has been approved for signature-gathering yet. The state has a two-phase signature-gathering process, with a first phase for nine weeks between September and December. Then, if sufficient signatures are gathered, the legislature must act on the measure before next May. If it fails to approve the measure, a second, eight-week signature-gathering process commences. Initiatives will need 64,750 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Nevada

A Moore Information poll from 2013 had support for legalization at 54%, and legalization supporters will most definitely have a chance to put those numbers to the test next year because the Marijuana Policy Project-backed Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol initiative has already qualified for the ballot. It would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds and an eight-ounce of concentrates, and it would allow for the home growing of six pot plants per adult, with a household limit of 12. Home growers could keep the fruits of their harvest. The initiative would also create a legal marijuana commerce system with a 15% excise tax.

There's a Decent Chance

Michigan

An April Michigan Poll had support for legalization at 51%, which doesn't leave much margin for error. Nonetheless, at least two groups are embarked on legalization initiative campaigns (a third appears to have gone dormant).

The more grassroots Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Initiative Committee would legalize the possession of up to 2.5 ounces by adults and allow home grows of 12 mature plants and an unlimited number of immature ones. Home growers could possess the fruits of all their harvest. The non-commercial transfer of up to 2 ½ ounces would also be legal. A system of regulated marijuana commerce is included and would feature a 10% tax.

The competing Michigan Cannabis Coalition initiative appears to have no personal possession limits, but would only allow for home grows of two plants. It provides an option for localities to ban home grows, or to raise the limit to four plants. It envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce, with taxes to be set by the legislature.

Michigan only rates the "decent chance" category because of its razor-thin support for legalization and because of its history of marijuana legalization initiatives failing to qualify for the ballot. Initiatives will need more than 250,000 voter signatures to qualify, and they have until next June 1 to do so. Both campaigns have just gotten underway with signature-gathering.

Missouri

A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll from February showed only 45% in favor of marijuana legalization, but Missouri activists organized as Show-Me Cannabis have been waging a serious, hard-fought campaign to educate Missourians on the issue, and it could pay off next year.

Their initiative would legalize up to 12 ounces of buds, one ounce of concentrates, a pound of edibles and 20 ounces of cannabis liquids, as well as allow for home grows of up to six plants. It would also create a medical marijuana program and a legal, regulated marijuana commerce.

Since it is a constitutional amendment, the initiative will need at least 157,788 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. Organizers will have until next May to get them.

Ohio

Ohio is a special case. The ResponsibleOhio initiative either will or will not have qualified for the ballot by midnight Thursday. If it qualifies, the state could well be the next one to legalize marijuana, since it would go to a vote this November. An April Quinnipiac University poll had support for legalization at 52%.

If it doesn't qualify, others are lined up to take another shot. Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis have a constitutional amendment initiative with no specified possession limits for people 18 and over. It also allows home grows of 24 plants per person, with a limit of 96 plants per household.

Constitutional amendments need 385,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot; initiated statutes only need 115,000. Like Michigan, however, Ohio is a state with a history of initiatives failing to make the ballot.

Not Likely Next Year

In the states below, activists are undertaking efforts to get on the ballot next year, but the odds are against them, either because of poor (or no) polling, or lack of funds and organization, or both.

Mississippi

The Mississippi Alliance for Cannabis is sponsoring Proposition 48, a constitutional amendment initiative that "would legalize the use, cultivation and sale of cannabis and industrial hemp. Cannabis related crimes would be punished in a manner similar to, or to a lesser degree, than alcohol related crimes. Cannabis sales would be taxed 7%. Cannabis sold for medical purposes and industrial hemp would be exempt from taxation. The Governor would be required to pardon persons convicted of non-violent cannabis crimes against the State of Mississippi."

There is no recent polling on attitudes toward legalization in the state, but it is one of the most conservative in the country. To get on the ballot, supporters need to gather 107,216 valid voter signatures by December 17, one year after they started seeking them.

Montana

Ballot Issue 7, which would legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults, but not create a legal marijuana commerce, is the brainchild of a Glendive man who says he plans to bicycle across the state to gather support and signatures.

Prospects for 2016

Five states are well-positioned to legalize marijuana via initiatives next year, another three could possibly do it, and that would be further evidence that the apparent ongoing sea change in marijuana policy is no fluke. It's going to be interesting.

After they count the ballots on election day next year, a whole lot of Americans could be living in legal marijuana states.

Marijuana is going to be part of the political conversation between now and Election Day 2016. Support for legalization is now consistently polling above 50% nationwide, four states and DC have already voted to legalize it, and activists in at least 10 states are doing their best to make pot an issue this time around.

In those 10 states, they're working to take marijuana legalization directly to the voters in the form of initiatives. Not all of those efforts will actually make the ballot—mass signature-gathering campaigns require not only enthusiasm but cold, hard cash to succeed—and not all of those that qualify will necessarily win, but in a handful of states, including the nation's most populous, the prospects for passing pot legalization next year look quite good.

Presidential contenders are already finding the question of pot legalization unavoidable. They're mostly finding the topic uncomfortable, with none—not even Rand Paul—embracing full-on legalization, most staking out middling positions, and some Republicans looking for traction by fervently opposing it. Just this week, Chris Christie vowed to undo legalization where it already exists if he is elected president.

It's worth noting that it is the initiative process that is enabling the process of ending pot prohibition. Only half the states have it—mostly west of the Mississippi—but the use of citizen initiatives has led the way first for medical marijuana legalization and now with outright legalization.

In the face of overwhelming support for medical marijuana, state legislators proved remarkably recalcitrant. It took five years after California voters made it the first medical marijuana state for Hawaii to become the first state to pass it at the legislature. Even now, with nearly half the states having approved some form of medical marijuana, getting such bills through legislatures is excruciatingly difficult, and results in overly restrictive and ineffective state programs.

It's been the same with legalization. Voters approved legalization via initiatives in Colorado and Washington in 2012 and Alaska, Oregon, and the District of Columbia last year. But even in states with majorities or pluralities in favor of legalization, legalization bills haven't gotten passed.

Efforts are afoot at a number of statehouses, and one of them will eventually be the first to legislate legalization, maybe even next year (it's not outside the realm of possibility), but for now, if legalization is going to continue to expand, it's going to come thanks to the initiative states. In fact, marijuana policy reform is an issue on which elected officials have been so tin-eared and unresponsive to the will of the voters that their failure is an advertisement for the utility of direct democracy.

By the time the polls close on Election Day 2016, we could see the number of legalization states double and the number of Americans living free of pot prohibition quadruple to more than 60 million—or more. Attitudes on marijuana are shifting fast, and by this time next year, the prospects of even more states actually approving legalization could be even higher.

But right now, we have five states where the prospects of getting on the ballot and winning look good, three states where it looks iffy but could surprise, and four states where it looks like a long-shot next year.

Looking Good for Legalization

Arizona

A June Rocky Mountain Poll from the Behavioral Research Center has support for legalization at 53%, and Arizonans could find themselves having to decide which competing legalization proposal they like best.

The Marijuana Policy Project-backed Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or five grams of concentrates, as well as allow home grows of up to six plants per person, with a cap of 12 plants per household. The initiative also envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a tax of 15%. Localities could bar pot businesses or even home growing, but only upon a popular vote.

The second initiative, from Arizonans for Mindful Regulation, would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds or concentrates, as well as allow for home grows of up to 12 plants, and home growers could keep the fruits of their harvests. The initiative envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax on retail sales. It would allow localities to regulate, but not ban marijuana businesses.

Both campaigns are in the signature-gathering process. They will need 150,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the 2016 ballot and they have until next July to get them.

California

A May PPIC poll had support for legalization at 54%, and Californians have a variety of initiatives to choose from. At least six legalization initiatives have already been cleared for signature-gathering by state officials, but everybody is still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

That would be the much anticipated initiative from the Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform, which represents many of the major players in the state, as well as deep-pocketed outside players from all the major drug reform groups. The coalition's initiative was delayed while it waited for the release of a report from Blue Ribbon Commission on Marijuana Policy, led by pro-legalization Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). That report came out last week, and the coalition says it expects to have its initiative ready within a few weeks.

The delays in getting the initiative out and the signature-gathering campaign underway are going to put pressure on the campaign. To qualify for the ballot, initiatives must come up with some 366,000 valid voter signatures, and that takes time, as well as money. Most of the other initiatives don't have the money to make a serious run at signatures, but the coalition does. For all of the California legalization initiatives, the real hard deadline for signatures is February 4.

Maine

The most recent polling, a Public Policy Polling survey from 2013, had only a plurality (48% to 39%) favoring legalization, but that's nearly two years old, and if Maine is following national trends, support should only have increased since then. Maine is winnable.

This is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative has competition from local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol would legalize possession of up to an ounce of buds and allow for six-plant home grows. It would also create a system of regulated marijuana commerce with a 10% tax above and beyond the state sales tax, and it would allow for marijuana social clubs as well as retail stores.

The competing initiative, from Legalize Maine, is a bit looser on possession and home grows, allowing up to 2.5 ounces and six mature and 12 immature plants. Unlike the MPP initiative, which would have the Alcohol Bureau regulate marijuana, this one would leave it to the Department of Agriculture. It would also allow for marijuana social clubs as well as pot shops and would impose a 10% flat sales tax.

Initiatives need 61,126 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. The campaigns have until next spring to get them in.

Massachusetts

A Suffolk/Boston Herald poll from February has support for legalization at 53% in the Bay State, where activists have since the turn of the century been laying the groundwork for legalization with a series of successful non-binding policy questions demonstrating public support, not to mention voting to approve medical marijuana in 2008 and decriminalization in 2012.

Like Arizona and Maine, Massachusetts is another state where a Marijuana Policy Project-backed initiative is being contested by local activists. The MPP-affiliated Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol is still in the initiative-drafting process and details of its initiative remain unknown.

Meanwhile, local activists organized as Bay State Repeal have come up with a very liberal initiative that would legalize possession and cultivation—without limits—and allow for marijuana farmers' markets and social clubs. This initiative would also create a system of licensed, regulated and taxed marijuana commerce.

Neither Massachusetts initiative has been approved for signature-gathering yet. The state has a two-phase signature-gathering process, with a first phase for nine weeks between September and December. Then, if sufficient signatures are gathered, the legislature must act on the measure before next May. If it fails to approve the measure, a second, eight-week signature-gathering process commences. Initiatives will need 64,750 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot.

Nevada

A Moore Information poll from 2013 had support for legalization at 54%, and legalization supporters will most definitely have a chance to put those numbers to the test next year because the Marijuana Policy Project-backed Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol initiative has already qualified for the ballot. It would legalize the possession of up to an ounce of buds and an eight-ounce of concentrates, and it would allow for the home growing of six pot plants per adult, with a household limit of 12. Home growers could keep the fruits of their harvest. The initiative would also create a legal marijuana commerce system with a 15% excise tax.

There's a Decent Chance

Michigan

An April Michigan Poll had support for legalization at 51%, which doesn't leave much margin for error. Nonetheless, at least two groups are embarked on legalization initiative campaigns (a third appears to have gone dormant).

The more grassroots Comprehensive Cannabis Law Reform Initiative Committee would legalize the possession of up to 2.5 ounces by adults and allow home grows of 12 mature plants and an unlimited number of immature ones. Home growers could possess the fruits of all their harvest. The non-commercial transfer of up to 2 ½ ounces would also be legal. A system of regulated marijuana commerce is included and would feature a 10% tax.

The competing Michigan Cannabis Coalition initiative appears to have no personal possession limits, but would only allow for home grows of two plants. It provides an option for localities to ban home grows, or to raise the limit to four plants. It envisions a system of regulated marijuana commerce, with taxes to be set by the legislature.

Michigan only rates the "decent chance" category because of its razor-thin support for legalization and because of its history of marijuana legalization initiatives failing to qualify for the ballot. Initiatives will need more than 250,000 voter signatures to qualify, and they have until next June 1 to do so. Both campaigns have just gotten underway with signature-gathering.

Missouri

A Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll from February showed only 45% in favor of marijuana legalization, but Missouri activists organized as Show-Me Cannabis have been waging a serious, hard-fought campaign to educate Missourians on the issue, and it could pay off next year.

Their initiative would legalize up to 12 ounces of buds, one ounce of concentrates, a pound of edibles and 20 ounces of cannabis liquids, as well as allow for home grows of up to six plants. It would also create a medical marijuana program and a legal, regulated marijuana commerce.

Since it is a constitutional amendment, the initiative will need at least 157,788 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot. Organizers will have until next May to get them.

Ohio

Ohio is a special case. The ResponsibleOhio initiative either will or will not have qualified for the ballot by midnight Thursday. If it qualifies, the state could well be the next one to legalize marijuana, since it would go to a vote this November. An April Quinnipiac University poll had support for legalization at 52%.

If it doesn't qualify, others are lined up to take another shot. Responsible Ohioans for Cannabis have a constitutional amendment initiative with no specified possession limits for people 18 and over. It also allows home grows of 24 plants per person, with a limit of 96 plants per household.

Constitutional amendments need 385,000 valid voter signatures to qualify for the ballot; initiated statutes only need 115,000. Like Michigan, however, Ohio is a state with a history of initiatives failing to make the ballot.

Not Likely Next Year

In the states below, activists are undertaking efforts to get on the ballot next year, but the odds are against them, either because of poor (or no) polling, or lack of funds and organization, or both.

Mississippi

The Mississippi Alliance for Cannabis is sponsoring Proposition 48, a constitutional amendment initiative that "would legalize the use, cultivation and sale of cannabis and industrial hemp. Cannabis related crimes would be punished in a manner similar to, or to a lesser degree, than alcohol related crimes. Cannabis sales would be taxed 7%. Cannabis sold for medical purposes and industrial hemp would be exempt from taxation. The Governor would be required to pardon persons convicted of non-violent cannabis crimes against the State of Mississippi."

There is no recent polling on attitudes toward legalization in the state, but it is one of the most conservative in the country. To get on the ballot, supporters need to gather 107,216 valid voter signatures by December 17, one year after they started seeking them.

Montana

Ballot Issue 7, which would legalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana by adults, but not create a legal marijuana commerce, is the brainchild of a Glendive man who says he plans to bicycle across the state to gather support and signatures.

Prospects for 2016

Five states are well-positioned to legalize marijuana via initiatives next year, another three could possibly do it, and that would be further evidence that the apparent ongoing sea change in marijuana policy is no fluke. It's going to be interesting.

In the aftermath of that famously discredited New York Times story about a "criminal referral" regarding Hillary Clinton's emails, a few important questions stand out, among many that remain unanswered.

Exactly who told Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo that the referral to the Justice Department -- concerning whether information in her emails that wasn't classified should have been -- was a matter for criminal investigation? And when will the Justice Department track down, reveal, and discipline those who made these false statements to the Times and later to other news outlets?

These unpleasant questions arise from the Times editors' explanation of an error that is enormously troubling (and the most consequential of several substantive mistakes littered throughout Schmidt and Apuzzo's article, as catalogued superbly by Kurt Eichenwald in Newsweek). Never was there any criminal referral, only a "security referral" prompted by the appearance of retroactively classified material in a sample of Clinton emails released by the State Department.

In short, Clinton did nothing wrong, and the ensuing journalistic firestorm was, in reality, no more than a boring bureaucratic dispute over what should or should not be kept secret.

Yet determining who did this is important because -- if we accept the editors' version that the reporters' sources misled them -- one or more federal officials evidently tried to smear a presidential contender with a falsified leak, under cover of anonymity. That may or may not be a federal crime, but it should be a firing offense at the very least. And the public has a right to know if officials in the nation's top law enforcement agency tried illicitly to influence a national election.

In the lengthy post-mortem published by Times public editor Margaret Sullivan on July 27, which delineated the damaging "mess," she quoted executive editor Dean Bacquet, who told her: "You had the government confirming that it was a criminal referral." Deputy editor Matthew Purdy offered further detail on the anonymous figures who led Schmidt and Apuzzo astray. "The reporters had what Mr. Purdy described as 'multiple, reliable, highly placed sources," wrote Sullivan, "including some 'in law enforcement.'" I think we can safely read that as the Justice Department.

That does seem a very safe assumption, partly because Apuzzo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reporter, joined the Times almost two years ago to cover Justice, while Schmidt has covered the FBI, an agency overseen by Justice officials. Both would have access to multiple, highly placed sources in law enforcement, although whether those sources are "reliable" is now open to serious doubt.

Of course, there was at least one other obvious source behind this story, as Sullivan mentioned in passing: "The story developed quickly on Thursdayafternoon and evening, after tips from various sources, including on Capitol Hill." With absolute safety, that generic reference should be read as the House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and controlled by the Republican majority -- an outfit that has provided multiple, unreliable, and slanted leaksto Schmidt and his Times colleagues, which the paper has eagerly disseminated.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the select committee's ranking Democrat, who immediately corrected the inaccurate "criminal referral" story, righteously blasted his Republican colleagues. "This is the latest example in a series of inaccurate leaks to generate false front-page headlines -- only to be corrected later -- and they have absolutely nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi or protecting our diplomatic corps overseas," he told The Hill newspaper. Clearly, Cummings intended to indicate that this latest leak came from the select committee's members or staff.

But the unethical conduct that has apparently become habitual around Gowdy is a matter for the House to handle - not that its Republican majority ever will. Dealing with the misconduct of the government official or officials who leaked the phrase "criminal referral," however, is an issue that only the Justice Department itself can address. Perhaps the person or persons responsible will do the right thing and step forward. If not, the department's own inspector general should open an investigation to uncover the truth.

Lingering suspicion that anyone in government would so blatantly violate the public trust is enough to undermine confidence in the department's law enforcement mission. Smearing a former secretary of state now running for president isn't "justice." And this isn't a situation Attorney General Loretta Lynch -- or President Obama, for that matter -- should tolerate.

In the aftermath of that famously discredited New York Times story about a "criminal referral" regarding Hillary Clinton's emails, a few important questions stand out, among many that remain unanswered.

Exactly who told Times reporters Michael S. Schmidt and Matt Apuzzo that the referral to the Justice Department -- concerning whether information in her emails that wasn't classified should have been -- was a matter for criminal investigation? And when will the Justice Department track down, reveal, and discipline those who made these false statements to the Times and later to other news outlets?

These unpleasant questions arise from the Times editors' explanation of an error that is enormously troubling (and the most consequential of several substantive mistakes littered throughout Schmidt and Apuzzo's article, as catalogued superbly by Kurt Eichenwald in Newsweek). Never was there any criminal referral, only a "security referral" prompted by the appearance of retroactively classified material in a sample of Clinton emails released by the State Department.

In short, Clinton did nothing wrong, and the ensuing journalistic firestorm was, in reality, no more than a boring bureaucratic dispute over what should or should not be kept secret.

Yet determining who did this is important because -- if we accept the editors' version that the reporters' sources misled them -- one or more federal officials evidently tried to smear a presidential contender with a falsified leak, under cover of anonymity. That may or may not be a federal crime, but it should be a firing offense at the very least. And the public has a right to know if officials in the nation's top law enforcement agency tried illicitly to influence a national election.

In the lengthy post-mortem published by Times public editor Margaret Sullivan on July 27, which delineated the damaging "mess," she quoted executive editor Dean Bacquet, who told her: "You had the government confirming that it was a criminal referral." Deputy editor Matthew Purdy offered further detail on the anonymous figures who led Schmidt and Apuzzo astray. "The reporters had what Mr. Purdy described as 'multiple, reliable, highly placed sources," wrote Sullivan, "including some 'in law enforcement.'" I think we can safely read that as the Justice Department.

That does seem a very safe assumption, partly because Apuzzo, a Pulitzer Prize-winning AP reporter, joined the Times almost two years ago to cover Justice, while Schmidt has covered the FBI, an agency overseen by Justice officials. Both would have access to multiple, highly placed sources in law enforcement, although whether those sources are "reliable" is now open to serious doubt.

Of course, there was at least one other obvious source behind this story, as Sullivan mentioned in passing: "The story developed quickly on Thursdayafternoon and evening, after tips from various sources, including on Capitol Hill." With absolute safety, that generic reference should be read as the House Select Committee on Benghazi, chaired by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., and controlled by the Republican majority -- an outfit that has provided multiple, unreliable, and slanted leaksto Schmidt and his Times colleagues, which the paper has eagerly disseminated.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the select committee's ranking Democrat, who immediately corrected the inaccurate "criminal referral" story, righteously blasted his Republican colleagues. "This is the latest example in a series of inaccurate leaks to generate false front-page headlines -- only to be corrected later -- and they have absolutely nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi or protecting our diplomatic corps overseas," he told The Hill newspaper. Clearly, Cummings intended to indicate that this latest leak came from the select committee's members or staff.

But the unethical conduct that has apparently become habitual around Gowdy is a matter for the House to handle - not that its Republican majority ever will. Dealing with the misconduct of the government official or officials who leaked the phrase "criminal referral," however, is an issue that only the Justice Department itself can address. Perhaps the person or persons responsible will do the right thing and step forward. If not, the department's own inspector general should open an investigation to uncover the truth.

Lingering suspicion that anyone in government would so blatantly violate the public trust is enough to undermine confidence in the department's law enforcement mission. Smearing a former secretary of state now running for president isn't "justice." And this isn't a situation Attorney General Loretta Lynch -- or President Obama, for that matter -- should tolerate.

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/jon-stewart-just-announced-his-final-three-daily-show-guests-and-things-are-about-get-wildJon Stewart Just Announced His Final Three “Daily Show” Guests — And Things Are About To Get Wildhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104509374/0/alternet~Jon-Stewart-Just-Announced-His-Final-Three-%e2%80%9cDaily-Show%e2%80%9d-Guests-%e2%80%94-And-Things-Are-About-To-Get-Wild

Who took the coveted spots?

We’ve already seen a number of high-profile celebs stop by “The Daily Show” in the last few weeks to tip their hats to the soon-to-be retiree, Jon Stewart. JJ Abrams sat down with Stewart last night for an interview. Before that: David McCullough and a tight-lipped Tom Cruise made some time to pay tribute. Hell, Stewart was even able to wrangle thePresident of the United States for some words on his favorite punching bag, Donald Trump.

Which is all to say: Stewart seems to have the wherewithal to snag whomever he wants for his last few shows. So who did he pick? The Washington Post reports today that “The Daily Show” has locked down guest appearances from comedians Louis C.K., Denis Leary and Amy Schumer for the final three spots leading up to his departure.

His picks aren’t entirely surprising; all three of the comedians are quite friendly with the host of 16 years. Just this week, Stewart made asurprise return to stand-up comedy at the Comedy Central and was accompanied by C.K.. Amy Schumer, we have on good record, wasapproached by Stewart earlier this year about taking over the program. She respectfully (and tearfully) declined, explaining that she didn’t want to be tied to a 5-year plan.

Guests for the final Aug. 6 episode remain somewhat of a mystery. Page 6 was the first to report that “TDS” producers were in talks with many of Stewart’s favorite villains to appear on the 50-minute program and deliver a roast. Donald Trump later claimed that Stewart had been “begging” him to appear on it.

We’ve already seen a number of high-profile celebs stop by “The Daily Show” in the last few weeks to tip their hats to the soon-to-be retiree, Jon Stewart. JJ Abrams sat down with Stewart last night for an interview. Before that: David McCullough and a tight-lipped Tom Cruise made some time to pay tribute. Hell, Stewart was even able to wrangle thePresident of the United States for some words on his favorite punching bag, Donald Trump.

Which is all to say: Stewart seems to have the wherewithal to snag whomever he wants for his last few shows. So who did he pick? The Washington Post reports today that “The Daily Show” has locked down guest appearances from comedians Louis C.K., Denis Leary and Amy Schumer for the final three spots leading up to his departure.

His picks aren’t entirely surprising; all three of the comedians are quite friendly with the host of 16 years. Just this week, Stewart made asurprise return to stand-up comedy at the Comedy Central and was accompanied by C.K.. Amy Schumer, we have on good record, wasapproached by Stewart earlier this year about taking over the program. She respectfully (and tearfully) declined, explaining that she didn’t want to be tied to a 5-year plan.

Guests for the final Aug. 6 episode remain somewhat of a mystery. Page 6 was the first to report that “TDS” producers were in talks with many of Stewart’s favorite villains to appear on the 50-minute program and deliver a roast. Donald Trump later claimed that Stewart had been “begging” him to appear on it.

Well, the big day is upon us. Politico reported this week that a handful of candidates have made the final cut and have been invited to make one last tryout for the starring role in the Kochs’ big 2015 Summer Super-Pageant:

Four leading GOP presidential candidates – Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker – are traveling to a Southern California luxury hotel in coming days to make their cases directly to the Koch brothers and hundreds of other wealthy conservatives planning to spend close to $1 billion in the run-up to the 2016 election. The gathering – which also will include former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, but notably not Sen. Rand Paul — is hosted by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group in the Kochs’ increasingly influential network of political and public policy outfits. It represents a major opportunity for the candidates at a pivotal moment in the presidential primary.

The crowded field of GOP contenders is competing aggressively for the support of uncommitted mega-donors as the campaign hurtles towards its first debates in what’s expected to be a long and costly battle for the Republican nomination. Freedom Partners’ annual summer conference is set for August 1 through August 3, and is expected to draw 450 of the biggest financiers of the right for sessions about the fiscally conservative policies and politics that animate the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and many of the donors in their network.

Most have the capability to write seven- or even eight-figure checks to the super PACs fueling the GOP presidential primary, and a significant proportion have yet to settle on a 2016 choice, or are considering supporting multiple candidates. That includes Charles and David Koch, as well as Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer, both of whom will be represented at the conference by advisers, and a number of other attendees of past conferences whose 2016 leanings are being closely watched.

The article stresses that the Kochs are not going to officially anoint their choice but their big checks, and those of their billionaire buds, are being closely watched for signs of who the “smart money” is betting on to come out on top. The current frontrunner Donald Trump was not invited, and according to this article is being actively blocked by the Koch network. Obviously, they think the eventual winner will be one of those four candidates (plus Carly Fiorina, for some reason.) Think about that for a moment. There are some extremely rich Republicans out there who think that Ted Cruz has what it takes to be president.

That in mind, let’s take a look at Cruz’s latest, shall we? In a blatant attempt to make Trump and Huckabee look like loser moderates, the Texas bomb thrower said the following earlier this week about the Iran nuclear non-proliferation agreement:

“If this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism. Billions of dollars under control of this administration will flow into the hands of jihadists who will use that money to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans.”

If that isn’t an illustration of just how hard it is for this crop of GOP hopefuls to out-demagogue one another, I don’t know what is. Chamberlain to Hitler to radical Islamic extremist. There’s nothing left for Lindsey Graham to fulminate about except Satan.

One big money guy did call Cruz on the carpet for his hyperbole:

I am opposed to the Iran deal, but @SenTedCruz is way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause.

“Nowhere in President Obama’s remarks did he dispute the underlying facts. Nowhere in President Obama’s remarks did he point to any other organization on the face of the globe that would be a larger global financier of radical Islamic terrorism than the Obama administration is trying to become.”

The president didn’t reveal any larger global financiers of radical islamic terrorism besides himself, which proves that he is it! Point, set, match.

But the show must go on, and what kind of Big Top circus would it be without a first class ringmaster? With all the major conservative stars from every medium to choose from — from Megyn Kelly to Sean Hannity to Rich Lowry to Eric Erickson — it appears that the Kochs have gone in a different direction for their weekend soiree:

Politico’s chief White House correspondent Mike Allen has been booked to emcee part of an event set up by a group funded by the Koch brothers designed to connect Republican presidential candidates with wealthy donors, according to Politico.

Keep in mind that this is not a presidential debate for the public. It isn’t an issues forum or a town hall for voters and constituents. This is a meeting for big Republican donors to decide which candidate to give gigantic, unlimited campaign contributions thus putting their thumbs on the scale of democracy. And a highly respected establishment journalist is helping them do it. This isn’t even the first time this year that a mainstream journalist has performed this little function for the Kochs. Last January, ABCs Jonathan Karl moderated a similar q-and-a for the benefit of the GOP megabucks network. As Think Progress noted, this raises some serious ethical questions. Marc Cooper of the University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism, told them:

Karl’s involvement amounts to “an in-kind contribution to a partisan group that is clearly aimed at positioning for the 2016 race,” noting, “The public has no input or access and no public service is being performed. Karl has no business being there.”

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics states that journalists should “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” and “avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.” The fact that Allen states he has “editorial control of the questions” actually makes it worse — he’s lending his own credibility and expertise to the task at hand: helping the billionaires pick their boy.

Needless to say, nobody in the establishment media cares about this. They see nothing wrong with journalists privately helping the Kochs try to buy the election. They like to think they’re all of the same class and share their interests. And frankly they do:

Attendees at Mitt Romney’s third annual retreat this weekend will have the chance to go skeet shooting with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham or play flag football with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. They can even do “Sunrise Pilates” with Bloomberg reporter Mark Halperin and the former first lady aspirant Ann Romney.

[T]he New York Post’s Kyle Smith calls Stewart a “partisan hack” who “allowed himself to be seduced by power. He sold out. He dined with those he should have been dining upon.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Stewart’s audience was never under any illusion that Stewart was politically neutral. If these conservatives thought he was they missed the joke for 16 years. But that description very aptly describes someone else. And he’ll be dining with a whole bunch of Republican billionaires and candidates this very week-end.

Well, the big day is upon us. Politico reported this week that a handful of candidates have made the final cut and have been invited to make one last tryout for the starring role in the Kochs’ big 2015 Summer Super-Pageant:

Four leading GOP presidential candidates – Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker – are traveling to a Southern California luxury hotel in coming days to make their cases directly to the Koch brothers and hundreds of other wealthy conservatives planning to spend close to $1 billion in the run-up to the 2016 election. The gathering – which also will include former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, but notably not Sen. Rand Paul — is hosted by Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the umbrella group in the Kochs’ increasingly influential network of political and public policy outfits. It represents a major opportunity for the candidates at a pivotal moment in the presidential primary.

The crowded field of GOP contenders is competing aggressively for the support of uncommitted mega-donors as the campaign hurtles towards its first debates in what’s expected to be a long and costly battle for the Republican nomination. Freedom Partners’ annual summer conference is set for August 1 through August 3, and is expected to draw 450 of the biggest financiers of the right for sessions about the fiscally conservative policies and politics that animate the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and many of the donors in their network.

Most have the capability to write seven- or even eight-figure checks to the super PACs fueling the GOP presidential primary, and a significant proportion have yet to settle on a 2016 choice, or are considering supporting multiple candidates. That includes Charles and David Koch, as well as Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and hedge fund billionaires Paul Singer, both of whom will be represented at the conference by advisers, and a number of other attendees of past conferences whose 2016 leanings are being closely watched.

The article stresses that the Kochs are not going to officially anoint their choice but their big checks, and those of their billionaire buds, are being closely watched for signs of who the “smart money” is betting on to come out on top. The current frontrunner Donald Trump was not invited, and according to this article is being actively blocked by the Koch network. Obviously, they think the eventual winner will be one of those four candidates (plus Carly Fiorina, for some reason.) Think about that for a moment. There are some extremely rich Republicans out there who think that Ted Cruz has what it takes to be president.

That in mind, let’s take a look at Cruz’s latest, shall we? In a blatant attempt to make Trump and Huckabee look like loser moderates, the Texas bomb thrower said the following earlier this week about the Iran nuclear non-proliferation agreement:

“If this deal is consummated, it will make the Obama administration the world’s leading financier of radical Islamic terrorism. Billions of dollars under control of this administration will flow into the hands of jihadists who will use that money to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans.”

If that isn’t an illustration of just how hard it is for this crop of GOP hopefuls to out-demagogue one another, I don’t know what is. Chamberlain to Hitler to radical Islamic extremist. There’s nothing left for Lindsey Graham to fulminate about except Satan.

One big money guy did call Cruz on the carpet for his hyperbole:

I am opposed to the Iran deal, but @SenTedCruz is way over the line on the Obama terrorism charge. Hurts the cause.

“Nowhere in President Obama’s remarks did he dispute the underlying facts. Nowhere in President Obama’s remarks did he point to any other organization on the face of the globe that would be a larger global financier of radical Islamic terrorism than the Obama administration is trying to become.”

The president didn’t reveal any larger global financiers of radical islamic terrorism besides himself, which proves that he is it! Point, set, match.

But the show must go on, and what kind of Big Top circus would it be without a first class ringmaster? With all the major conservative stars from every medium to choose from — from Megyn Kelly to Sean Hannity to Rich Lowry to Eric Erickson — it appears that the Kochs have gone in a different direction for their weekend soiree:

Politico’s chief White House correspondent Mike Allen has been booked to emcee part of an event set up by a group funded by the Koch brothers designed to connect Republican presidential candidates with wealthy donors, according to Politico.

Keep in mind that this is not a presidential debate for the public. It isn’t an issues forum or a town hall for voters and constituents. This is a meeting for big Republican donors to decide which candidate to give gigantic, unlimited campaign contributions thus putting their thumbs on the scale of democracy. And a highly respected establishment journalist is helping them do it. This isn’t even the first time this year that a mainstream journalist has performed this little function for the Kochs. Last January, ABCs Jonathan Karl moderated a similar q-and-a for the benefit of the GOP megabucks network. As Think Progress noted, this raises some serious ethical questions. Marc Cooper of the University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism, told them:

Karl’s involvement amounts to “an in-kind contribution to a partisan group that is clearly aimed at positioning for the 2016 race,” noting, “The public has no input or access and no public service is being performed. Karl has no business being there.”

The Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics states that journalists should “avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived,” and “avoid political and other outside activities that may compromise integrity or impartiality, or may damage credibility.” The fact that Allen states he has “editorial control of the questions” actually makes it worse — he’s lending his own credibility and expertise to the task at hand: helping the billionaires pick their boy.

Needless to say, nobody in the establishment media cares about this. They see nothing wrong with journalists privately helping the Kochs try to buy the election. They like to think they’re all of the same class and share their interests. And frankly they do:

Attendees at Mitt Romney’s third annual retreat this weekend will have the chance to go skeet shooting with South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham or play flag football with Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. They can even do “Sunrise Pilates” with Bloomberg reporter Mark Halperin and the former first lady aspirant Ann Romney.

[T]he New York Post’s Kyle Smith calls Stewart a “partisan hack” who “allowed himself to be seduced by power. He sold out. He dined with those he should have been dining upon.”

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Stewart’s audience was never under any illusion that Stewart was politically neutral. If these conservatives thought he was they missed the joke for 16 years. But that description very aptly describes someone else. And he’ll be dining with a whole bunch of Republican billionaires and candidates this very week-end.

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http://www.alternet.org/investigations/fbi-built-database-can-catch-rapists-almost-nobody-uses-itThe FBI Built a Database That Can Catch Rapists — Almost Nobody Uses Ithttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104353292/0/alternet~The-FBI-Built-a-Database-That-Can-Catch-Rapists-%e2%80%94-Almost-Nobody-Uses-It

The agency has virtually ignored a system meant to help cops track the behavioral patterns of violent criminals.

QUANTICO, Va. — More than 30 years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a revolutionary computer system in a bomb shelter two floors beneath the cafeteria of its national academy. Dubbed the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP, it was a database designed to help catch the nation’s most violent offenders by linking together unsolved crimes. A serial rapist wielding a favorite knife in one attack might be identified when he used the same knife elsewhere. The system was rooted in the belief that some criminals’ methods were unique enough to serve as a kind of behavioral DNA — allowing identification based on how a person acted, rather than their genetic make-up.

Equally as important was the idea that local law enforcement agencies needed a way to better communicate with each other. Savvy killers had attacked in different jurisdictions to exploit gaping holes in police cooperation. ViCAP’s “implementation could mean the prevention of countless murders and the prompt apprehension of violent criminals,” the late Sen. Arlen Specter wrote in a letter to the Justice Department endorsing the program’s creation.

In the years since ViCAP was first conceived, data-mining has grown vastly more sophisticated, and computing power has become cheaper and more readily available. Corporations can link the food you purchase, the clothes you buy, and the websites you browse. The FBI can parse your emails, cellphone records and airline itineraries. In a world where everything is measured, data is ubiquitous — from the number of pieces of candy that a Marine hands out on patrol in Kandahar, to your heart rate as you walk up the stairs at work.

That’s what’s striking about ViCAP today: the paucity of information it contains. Only about 1,400 police agencies in the U.S., out of roughly 18,000, participate in the system. The database receives reports from far less than 1 percent of the violent crimes committed annually. It’s not even clear how many crimes the database has helped solve. The FBI does not release any figures. A review in the 1990s found it had linked only 33 crimes in 12 years.

Canadian authorities built on the original ViCAP framework to develop a modern and sophisticated system capable of identifying patterns and linking crimes. It has proven particularly successful at analyzing sexual-assault cases. But three decades and an estimated $30 million later, the FBI’s system remains stuck in the past, the John Henry of data mining. ViCAP was supposed to revolutionize American law enforcement. That revolution never came.

Few law enforcement officials dispute the potential of a system like ViCAP to help solve crimes. But the FBI has never delivered on its promise. In an agency with an $8.2 billion yearly budget, ViCAP receives around $800,000 a year to keep the system going. The ViCAP program has a staff of 12. Travel and training have been cut back in recent years. Last year, the program provided analytical assistance to local cops just 220 times. As a result, the program has done little to close the gap that prompted Congress to create it. Police agencies still don’t talk to each other on many occasions. Killers and rapists continue to escape arrest by exploiting that weakness. “The need is vital,” said Ritchie Martinez, the former president of the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts. “But ViCAP is not filling it.”

Local cops say the system is confusing and cumbersome. Entering a single case into the database can take an hour and hits — where an unsolved crime is connected to a prior incident — are rare. False positives are common. Many also said the FBI does little to teach cops how to use the system. Training has dropped from a high of about 5,500 officers in 2012 to 1,200 last year.

“We don’t really use ViCAP,” said Jeff Jensen, a criminal analyst for the Phoenix Police Department with 15 years of experience. “It really is quite a chore.”

The FBI has contributed to the confusion by misrepresenting the system. On its website, the FBI says cases in its database are “continually compared” for matches as new cases are entered. But in an interview, program officials said that does not happen. “We have plans for that in the future,” said Nathan Graham, a crime analyst for the program. The agency said it would update the information on its website.

The agency’s indifference to the database is particularly noteworthy at a time when emerging research suggests that such a tool could be especially useful in rape investigations.

For years, politicians and women’s advocates have focused on testing the DNA evidence in rape kits, which are administered to sexual assault victims after an attack. Such evidence can be compared against a nationwide database of DNA samples to find possible suspects. Backlogs at police departments across the country have left tens of thousands of kits untested.

But DNA is collected in only about half of rape cases, according to recent studies. A nationwide clearinghouse of the unique behaviors, methods, or marks of rapists could help solve those cases lacking genetic evidence, criminal experts said. Other research has shown that rapists are far more likely than killers to be serial offenders. Different studies have found that between one-fourth to two-thirds of rapists have committed multiple sexual assaults. Only about 1 percent of murderers are considered serial killers.

Studies have questioned the assumptions behind behavioral analysis tools like ViCAP. Violent criminals don’t always commit attacks the same way and different analysts can have remarkably different interpretations on whether crimes are linked. And a system that looks for criminal suspects on the basis of how a person acts is bound to raise alarms about Orwellian overreach. But many cops say any help is welcome in the difficult task of solving crimes like rape. A recent investigation by ProPublica and The New Orleans Advocate found that police in four states repeatedly missed chances to arrest the former NFL football star and convicted serial rapist Darren Sharper after failing to contact each other. “We’re always looking for tools,” said Joanne Archambault, the director of End Violence Against Women International, one of the leading police training organizations for the investigation of sexual assaults. “I just don’t think ViCAP was ever promoted enough as being one of them.”

The U.S. need only look north for an example of how such a system can play an important role in solving crimes. Not long after ViCAP was developed in the United States, Canadian law enforcement officials used it as a model to build their own tool, known as the Violent Criminal Linkage Analysis System, or ViCLAS. Today, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police maintains a database containing more than 500,000 criminal case profiles. The agency credits it with linking together some 7,000 unsolved crimes since 1995 – though not all of those linkages resulted in an arrest. If the FBI collected information as consistently as the Mounties, its database would contain more than 4.4 million cases, based on the greater U.S. population.

Instead, the FBI has about 89,000 cases on file.

Over the years, Canada has poured funding and staff into its program, resulting in a powerful analytical tool, said Sgt. Tony Lawlor, a senior ViCLAS analyst. One critical difference: in the U.S., reporting to the system is largely voluntary. In Canada, legislators have made it mandatory. Cops on the street still grumble about the system, which resembles the American version in the time and effort to complete. But “it has information which assists police officers, which is catching bad guys,” Lawlor said. “When police realize there’s a value associated with it, they use it.”

The ViCAP program eventually emerged from the fallout shelter where it began. It set up shop in an unmarked two-story brick office building in a Virginia business park surrounded by a printer’s shop, a dental practice and a Baptist church.

In a lengthy interview there, program officials offered a PowerPoint presentation with case studies of three serial killers who were captured in the past eight years with the help of the ViCAP program. They called the system “successful.”

“We do as good a job as we possibly can given our resources and limitations,” said Timothy Burke, a white-haired, 29-year agency veteran who is the program manager for ViCAP. “As with anything, we could always do better.”

***

Pierce Brooks was the father of the system.

A legendary cop, he had a square jaw, high forehead and dead serious eyes. During 20 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, he helped send 10 men to death row. He inspired the fictional Sgt. Joe Friday character in Dragnet. And he became famous for tracking down a pair of cop killers, a hunt chronicled in Joseph Wambaugh’s 1973 non-fiction bestseller, “The Onion Field.” “Brooks’ imagination was admired, but his thoroughness was legend,” Wambaugh wrote.

In the late 1950s, Brooks was investigating two murder cases. In each, a female model had been raped, slain and then trussed in rope in a manner that suggested skill with binding. Brooks intuited that the killer might commit other murders. For the next year, he leafed through out-of-town newspapers at a local library. When he read a story about a man arrested while trying to use rope to kidnap a woman, Brooks put the cases together. The man, Harvey Glatman, was sentenced to death, and executed a year later.

The experience convinced Brooks that serial killers often had “signatures” — distinct ways of acting that could help identify them much like a fingerprint. An early adopter of data-driven policing, Brooks realized that a computer database could be populated with details of unsolved murder cases from across the country, then searched for behavioral matches.

After Brooks spent years lobbying for such a system, Congress took interest. In July 1983, Brooks told a rapt Senate Judiciary Committee audience about serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to killing 30 women in seven states. The ViCAP system could have prevented many of those deaths, he said. “ViCAP, when implemented, would preclude the age-old, but still continuing problem of critically important information being missed, overlooked, or delayed when several police agencies, hundreds or even thousands of miles apart, are involved,” Brooks said in a written statement.

By the end of the hearing, Brooks had a letter from the committee requesting $1 million for the program. Although the program was endorsed by then-FBI director William Webster, agency managers weren’t particularly thrilled with the new idea.

***

The FBI grafted ViCAP into a new operation — the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The profilers, as they were known, were later made famous by Thomas Harris’ “The Silence of the Lambs” as brainy crime fighters who combined street smarts and psychology to nab the worst criminals. But at the time, the unproven unit was seen as a kind of skunk works. The FBI housed it in the former fallout shelter — “ten times deeper than dead people” as one agent later recalled. It was a warren of rooms, dark and dank. Others referred to the oddball collection of psychologists, cops and administrators as “rejects of the FBI” or the “leper colony,” according to “Into the Minds of Madmen,” a nonfiction account of the unit. Still, the new program captured the imagination of some. Murder mystery author Michael Newton penned a series of novels which, while not quite bestsellers, featured the heroic exploits of two ViCAP agents “accustomed to the grisly face of death and grueling hours on a job that has no end.”

Brooks was the first manager for the ViCAP program. The agency purchased what was then the “Cadillac” of computers — a VAX 11/785 nicknamed the “Superstar.” It filled up much of the room in the basement headquarters and had 512KB of memory. (An average household computer today has about 4,000 times more memory.) Brooks was “ecstatic” when the system finally came online on May 29, 1985, according to the account. His enthusiasm was not to last.

To get information into the database, local cops and deputies had to fill out by hand a form with 189 questions. The booklet was then sent to Quantico, where analysts hand-coded the information into the computer. It was a laborious process that flummoxed even Brooks. He had a hard time filling out the booklet, according to one account — as did officers in the field. Only a few hundred cases a year were being entered.

Enter Patricia Cornwell, the bestselling crime author, famous for her novels featuring Dr. Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner. In the early 1990s, she visited the subterranean unit during a tour of the academy. She recalled being distinctly unimpressed. An analyst told her that ViCAP didn’t contain much information. The police weren’t sending in many cases.

“I remember walking into a room at the FBI and there was one PC on a desk,” said Cornwell, who had once worked as a computer analyst. “That was ViCAP.” A senior FBI official had told Cornwell that the academy, of which ViCAP was a small part, was in a financial crunch. She contacted Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a friend, and told him of the academy’s troubles. In 1993, Hatch shepherded a measure through Congress to put more money into the academy — and ViCAP.

As the money made its way to the bomb shelter, the FBI conducted a “business review.” It found that local cops were sending the agency only 3 to 7 percent of homicides nationwide. The miniscule staff — about 10 people — could not even handle that load, and was not entering the cases on a timely basis. Cops on the street saw the system as a “black hole,” according to “Cold Case Homicide,” a criminal investigation handbook.

The FBI decided to kill the program. They picked Art Meister to be the hit man.

***

Meister spent much of his career at the FBI busting organized crime, beginning at the New Jersey field office. He rose through the ranks to supervise a national squad of more than 30 agents, investigating mob activities at home and overseas. He had no real experience with behavioral analysis or databases. But he did have an analytical approach that his superiors admired. They gave him instructions: “If it doesn’t work, do away with it. Kill it,” recalled Meister, now a security consultant with the Halle Barry Group.

Meister heard plenty of complaints. At one conference of police officers from across the country, a cop pulled Meister aside to talk about the program. “I’ve used it and all it gives me is bullshit leads,” the officer told him. “The general perception was by and large that the program didn’t work,” Meister said.

But instead of killing ViCAP, Meister became the system’s unlikely champion. Even with its small staff, the program was connecting far-flung law-enforcement agencies. The 189 questions had been slimmed to 95 — making it easier to fill out the form. Meister used the new funding from Hatch’s bill to reach out to 10 large jurisdictions to persuade them to install terminals that could connect with the database. By 1997, the system was receiving 1,500 or so cases per year — a record, though still a fraction of the violent crimes committed.

Meister saw the potential for the database to help solve sexual-assault crimes. He pushed the development of new questions specifically for sexual-assault cases. They weren’t added to the system until after his departure in 2001. “I felt it would really pay off dividends,” Meister said. “There are a lot more serial rapists than serial killers.”

But he found it difficult to make headway. Top officials showed no real interest in the program. After all, it was designed to help local law enforcement, not the agency. Meister called ViCAP “the furthest planet from the sun” — the last in line to get funds from the FBI. His efforts to improve it “were met with skepticism and bureaucratic politics. That’s what drove me nuts,” he said.

By the time he left, the program was muddling along. “ViCAP never got the support that it needs and deserves.” Meister said. “It’s unfortunate.”

***

On July 13, 2007, at 4 in the morning, a 15-year-old girl was sleeping in her bedroom in Chelmsford, a former factory town in northeastern Massachusetts bisected by Interstate 495.

She was startled awake when a man dressed in black with a ninja mask pressed his hand against her face. He placed a knife to her throat and told her “If you make any noise, I’ll fucking kill you.”

The girl screamed, rousing her mother and father. The parents rushed in, fighting with the man until they subdued him. Adam Leroy Lane, a truck driver from North Carolina, was arrested. In his truck, Massachusetts police found knives, cord and a DVD of “Hunting Humans,” a 2002 horror film.

Analysts for ViCAP, which has a special initiative to track killings along the nation’s highways, determined that the Massachusetts attack was similar to an earlier murder that had been committed in New Jersey. Acting on the tip, New Jersey state police detectives interviewed Lane in his jail cell. Lane confessed to killing Monica Massaro, a 38-year-old woman, in her home in the town of Bloomsbury — just a few blocks off Interstate 78. Lane, dubbed the Highway Killer, was connected via DNA samples to a killing and a violent attack in Pennsylvania; both women lived near interstates. Lane is now serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania.

New Jersey State Police Detective Geoff Noble said his case had been stalled. But once ViCAP connected Noble to Massachusetts police officers, they provided him a receipt that placed Lane at the truck stop in the small town where Massaro was killed. And when Noble confronted Lane, the killer started talking. Under a state attorney general’s directive, all New Jersey law enforcement agencies are supposed to report serial crimes to ViCAP. “The information provided by ViCAP was absolutely critical,” Noble said. “Without ViCAP, that case may have not ever been solved.”

FBI officials said the case, one of three success stories provided to ProPublica, showed the critical role of the database. (The other two: The case of Israel Keyes, a murderer who committed suicide after his arrest in Alaska in 2012 and has been linked to 11 killings; and that of Bruce Mendenhall, a trucker now serving a life sentence in Tennessee who was linked to the murder of four women in 2007.) “Given what we have, it’s a very successful program,” Burke said.

But in a dozen interviews with current and former police investigators and analysts across the country, most said they had not heard of ViCAP, or had seen little benefit from using it. Among sex-crimes detectives, none reported having been rewarded with a result from the system. “I’m not sending stuff off to ViCAP because I don’t even know what that is,” said Sgt. Peter Mahuna of the Portland, Oregon, Police Department. “I have never used ViCAP,” said Sgt. Elizabeth Donegan of Austin, Texas. “We’re not trained on it. I don’t know what it entails of whether it would be useful for us.”

Even Joanne Archambault, the director of the police training organization who sees the potential of ViCAP, didn’t use it when she ran the sex-crimes unit at the San Diego Police Department: “In all the years I worked these crimes, we never submitted information to ViCAP,” she said. “As a sex-crime supervisor, we invested time in effort that had a payout.”

Local authorities’ skepticism is reflected in the FBI’s statistics. In 2013, police submitted 240 cases involving sexual assault to the system. The FBI recorded 79,770 forcible rapes that year. Local agencies entered information on 232 homicides. The FBI recorded 14,196 murders.

“It's disappointing and embarrassing,” said Greg Cooper, a retired FBI agent who directed the ViCAP unit before becoming the police chief in Provo, Utah. “The FBI has not adequately marketed the program and its services. And local law enforcement has not been committed to participating.”

Not all rapes or murders involved serial offenders, of course. But with ViCAP receiving information on only about 0.5 percent of such violent crimes, it struggles to identify those that do.

“Cops don’t want to do more paperwork,” said Jim Markey, a former Phoenix police detective and now a security consultant. “Anytime you ask for voluntary compliance, it won’t be a priority. It’s not going to happen.”

But at some agencies where ViCAP has been incorporated into policing, commanders have become staunch defenders of its utility. Major J.R. Burton, the commander of special investigations for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, Florida, said detectives at his agency are mandated to enter information on violent crimes into the database. “I love ViCAP,” said Burton, who served on a board of local law enforcement officials that advises the FBI on the system. “There’s many cases where you don’t have DNA. How do you link them together?”

Burton said he understood the frustration that other police experience when they get no results back from the system. When pressed, Burton could not cite any investigations in his jurisdiction that had benefitted from the database. But he said the time and effort to use the system was worth it. “It allows you to communicate across the nation, whether serial homicide or serial rapist,” Burton said. “That’s awesome in my book.”

FBI officials said they had taken steps to address complaints. In July 2008, the program made the database accessible via the Web. Police can now enter their own searches, without having to rely on an FBI analyst, through any computer with an Internet connection. The program has also whittled down the number of questions. Graham says he tells police that it should take only about 30 minutes to enter the details of a case. “I tell them if they can fill out their taxes, they can fill out the ViCAP form,” Graham said.

Christine Weller, 12, was found dead by a river in British Columbia. A year later, Daryn Johnsrude, 16, was found bludgeoned to death. In July 1981, six children were killed in a month, ages six to 18. They were found strangled and beaten to death.

The killer: Clifford Olson, a career criminal, who eluded capture in part because the different jurisdictions where he committed his crimes had never communicated.

The murders prompted Canadian police officials to create a system to track and identify serial killers. After an initial effort failed, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent investigators to study the ViCAP program. They returned troubled by some aspects. The FBI system was not being used by many police agencies. Nor did it track sexual assaults. The Mounties decided to improve on the U.S. system by developing their own behavioral crime analysis tool — ViCLAS.

The ViCLAS system has three advantages over its American cousin: people, money and a legal mandate. More than a hundred officers and analysts work for the system, spread across the country. It’s funded at a reported cost of $14 million to $15 million per year. The most important development was that over the years, local legislative bodies passed laws making entry mandatory. All Canadian law enforcement agencies now file reports to the system.

The agency also greatly expanded the list of crimes that can be entered. Any crime that is “behaviorally rich” — usually an incident involving a criminal and a victim — can be entered into the database. It also created stringent quality control. A Canadian analyst who uncovers a link between crimes must submit the findings to a panel for review. Only then can the case be released to local agencies — reducing the chances for bad leads.

Today, Canada’s system has been repeatedly endorsed by senior police officials as an important tool in tracking down killers and rapists. The agency routinely publishes newsletters filled with stories about crimes that the system helped to solve. One study called ViCLAS the “gold standard” of such systems worldwide. The Mounties now license ViCLAS for an annual fee to police forces in Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The volume of information submitted has made the all the difference, Lawlor said. The system works when enough agencies enter cases to generate results. But agencies are reluctant to enter cases until they see results. “It’s a catch–22 situation,” Lawlor said. “If nothing goes in, then nothing can go out.”

When Burke, ViCAP’s program manager, speaks at national law enforcement conferences, he asks how many people in the audience have heard of his program. Typically only about one-half to two-thirds of the hands go up. A smaller percentage say they actually use it.

“We don’t have a club to force them to sign up with us,” Burke said.

The program’s main goal now is to ensure that the 100 largest police agencies in the country are enrolled. About 80 are. The agency continues to slowly develop its software. Training occurs monthly to encourage more participation.

The FBI doesn’t see the need for major changes to ViCAP, Burke explained. “It’s still supportive,” Burke said. “It’s still viable.”

QUANTICO, Va. — More than 30 years ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a revolutionary computer system in a bomb shelter two floors beneath the cafeteria of its national academy. Dubbed the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP, it was a database designed to help catch the nation’s most violent offenders by linking together unsolved crimes. A serial rapist wielding a favorite knife in one attack might be identified when he used the same knife elsewhere. The system was rooted in the belief that some criminals’ methods were unique enough to serve as a kind of behavioral DNA — allowing identification based on how a person acted, rather than their genetic make-up.

Equally as important was the idea that local law enforcement agencies needed a way to better communicate with each other. Savvy killers had attacked in different jurisdictions to exploit gaping holes in police cooperation. ViCAP’s “implementation could mean the prevention of countless murders and the prompt apprehension of violent criminals,” the late Sen. Arlen Specter wrote in a letter to the Justice Department endorsing the program’s creation.

In the years since ViCAP was first conceived, data-mining has grown vastly more sophisticated, and computing power has become cheaper and more readily available. Corporations can link the food you purchase, the clothes you buy, and the websites you browse. The FBI can parse your emails, cellphone records and airline itineraries. In a world where everything is measured, data is ubiquitous — from the number of pieces of candy that a Marine hands out on patrol in Kandahar, to your heart rate as you walk up the stairs at work.

That’s what’s striking about ViCAP today: the paucity of information it contains. Only about 1,400 police agencies in the U.S., out of roughly 18,000, participate in the system. The database receives reports from far less than 1 percent of the violent crimes committed annually. It’s not even clear how many crimes the database has helped solve. The FBI does not release any figures. A review in the 1990s found it had linked only 33 crimes in 12 years.

Canadian authorities built on the original ViCAP framework to develop a modern and sophisticated system capable of identifying patterns and linking crimes. It has proven particularly successful at analyzing sexual-assault cases. But three decades and an estimated $30 million later, the FBI’s system remains stuck in the past, the John Henry of data mining. ViCAP was supposed to revolutionize American law enforcement. That revolution never came.

Few law enforcement officials dispute the potential of a system like ViCAP to help solve crimes. But the FBI has never delivered on its promise. In an agency with an $8.2 billion yearly budget, ViCAP receives around $800,000 a year to keep the system going. The ViCAP program has a staff of 12. Travel and training have been cut back in recent years. Last year, the program provided analytical assistance to local cops just 220 times. As a result, the program has done little to close the gap that prompted Congress to create it. Police agencies still don’t talk to each other on many occasions. Killers and rapists continue to escape arrest by exploiting that weakness. “The need is vital,” said Ritchie Martinez, the former president of the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts. “But ViCAP is not filling it.”

Local cops say the system is confusing and cumbersome. Entering a single case into the database can take an hour and hits — where an unsolved crime is connected to a prior incident — are rare. False positives are common. Many also said the FBI does little to teach cops how to use the system. Training has dropped from a high of about 5,500 officers in 2012 to 1,200 last year.

“We don’t really use ViCAP,” said Jeff Jensen, a criminal analyst for the Phoenix Police Department with 15 years of experience. “It really is quite a chore.”

The FBI has contributed to the confusion by misrepresenting the system. On its website, the FBI says cases in its database are “continually compared” for matches as new cases are entered. But in an interview, program officials said that does not happen. “We have plans for that in the future,” said Nathan Graham, a crime analyst for the program. The agency said it would update the information on its website.

The agency’s indifference to the database is particularly noteworthy at a time when emerging research suggests that such a tool could be especially useful in rape investigations.

For years, politicians and women’s advocates have focused on testing the DNA evidence in rape kits, which are administered to sexual assault victims after an attack. Such evidence can be compared against a nationwide database of DNA samples to find possible suspects. Backlogs at police departments across the country have left tens of thousands of kits untested.

But DNA is collected in only about half of rape cases, according to recent studies. A nationwide clearinghouse of the unique behaviors, methods, or marks of rapists could help solve those cases lacking genetic evidence, criminal experts said. Other research has shown that rapists are far more likely than killers to be serial offenders. Different studies have found that between one-fourth to two-thirds of rapists have committed multiple sexual assaults. Only about 1 percent of murderers are considered serial killers.

Studies have questioned the assumptions behind behavioral analysis tools like ViCAP. Violent criminals don’t always commit attacks the same way and different analysts can have remarkably different interpretations on whether crimes are linked. And a system that looks for criminal suspects on the basis of how a person acts is bound to raise alarms about Orwellian overreach. But many cops say any help is welcome in the difficult task of solving crimes like rape. A recent investigation by ProPublica and The New Orleans Advocate found that police in four states repeatedly missed chances to arrest the former NFL football star and convicted serial rapist Darren Sharper after failing to contact each other. “We’re always looking for tools,” said Joanne Archambault, the director of End Violence Against Women International, one of the leading police training organizations for the investigation of sexual assaults. “I just don’t think ViCAP was ever promoted enough as being one of them.”

The U.S. need only look north for an example of how such a system can play an important role in solving crimes. Not long after ViCAP was developed in the United States, Canadian law enforcement officials used it as a model to build their own tool, known as the Violent Criminal Linkage Analysis System, or ViCLAS. Today, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police maintains a database containing more than 500,000 criminal case profiles. The agency credits it with linking together some 7,000 unsolved crimes since 1995 – though not all of those linkages resulted in an arrest. If the FBI collected information as consistently as the Mounties, its database would contain more than 4.4 million cases, based on the greater U.S. population.

Instead, the FBI has about 89,000 cases on file.

Over the years, Canada has poured funding and staff into its program, resulting in a powerful analytical tool, said Sgt. Tony Lawlor, a senior ViCLAS analyst. One critical difference: in the U.S., reporting to the system is largely voluntary. In Canada, legislators have made it mandatory. Cops on the street still grumble about the system, which resembles the American version in the time and effort to complete. But “it has information which assists police officers, which is catching bad guys,” Lawlor said. “When police realize there’s a value associated with it, they use it.”

The ViCAP program eventually emerged from the fallout shelter where it began. It set up shop in an unmarked two-story brick office building in a Virginia business park surrounded by a printer’s shop, a dental practice and a Baptist church.

In a lengthy interview there, program officials offered a PowerPoint presentation with case studies of three serial killers who were captured in the past eight years with the help of the ViCAP program. They called the system “successful.”

“We do as good a job as we possibly can given our resources and limitations,” said Timothy Burke, a white-haired, 29-year agency veteran who is the program manager for ViCAP. “As with anything, we could always do better.”

***

Pierce Brooks was the father of the system.

A legendary cop, he had a square jaw, high forehead and dead serious eyes. During 20 years with the Los Angeles Police Department, he helped send 10 men to death row. He inspired the fictional Sgt. Joe Friday character in Dragnet. And he became famous for tracking down a pair of cop killers, a hunt chronicled in Joseph Wambaugh’s 1973 non-fiction bestseller, “The Onion Field.” “Brooks’ imagination was admired, but his thoroughness was legend,” Wambaugh wrote.

In the late 1950s, Brooks was investigating two murder cases. In each, a female model had been raped, slain and then trussed in rope in a manner that suggested skill with binding. Brooks intuited that the killer might commit other murders. For the next year, he leafed through out-of-town newspapers at a local library. When he read a story about a man arrested while trying to use rope to kidnap a woman, Brooks put the cases together. The man, Harvey Glatman, was sentenced to death, and executed a year later.

The experience convinced Brooks that serial killers often had “signatures” — distinct ways of acting that could help identify them much like a fingerprint. An early adopter of data-driven policing, Brooks realized that a computer database could be populated with details of unsolved murder cases from across the country, then searched for behavioral matches.

After Brooks spent years lobbying for such a system, Congress took interest. In July 1983, Brooks told a rapt Senate Judiciary Committee audience about serial killer Ted Bundy, who confessed to killing 30 women in seven states. The ViCAP system could have prevented many of those deaths, he said. “ViCAP, when implemented, would preclude the age-old, but still continuing problem of critically important information being missed, overlooked, or delayed when several police agencies, hundreds or even thousands of miles apart, are involved,” Brooks said in a written statement.

By the end of the hearing, Brooks had a letter from the committee requesting $1 million for the program. Although the program was endorsed by then-FBI director William Webster, agency managers weren’t particularly thrilled with the new idea.

***

The FBI grafted ViCAP into a new operation — the Behavioral Analysis Unit. The profilers, as they were known, were later made famous by Thomas Harris’ “The Silence of the Lambs” as brainy crime fighters who combined street smarts and psychology to nab the worst criminals. But at the time, the unproven unit was seen as a kind of skunk works. The FBI housed it in the former fallout shelter — “ten times deeper than dead people” as one agent later recalled. It was a warren of rooms, dark and dank. Others referred to the oddball collection of psychologists, cops and administrators as “rejects of the FBI” or the “leper colony,” according to “Into the Minds of Madmen,” a nonfiction account of the unit. Still, the new program captured the imagination of some. Murder mystery author Michael Newton penned a series of novels which, while not quite bestsellers, featured the heroic exploits of two ViCAP agents “accustomed to the grisly face of death and grueling hours on a job that has no end.”

Brooks was the first manager for the ViCAP program. The agency purchased what was then the “Cadillac” of computers — a VAX 11/785 nicknamed the “Superstar.” It filled up much of the room in the basement headquarters and had 512KB of memory. (An average household computer today has about 4,000 times more memory.) Brooks was “ecstatic” when the system finally came online on May 29, 1985, according to the account. His enthusiasm was not to last.

To get information into the database, local cops and deputies had to fill out by hand a form with 189 questions. The booklet was then sent to Quantico, where analysts hand-coded the information into the computer. It was a laborious process that flummoxed even Brooks. He had a hard time filling out the booklet, according to one account — as did officers in the field. Only a few hundred cases a year were being entered.

Enter Patricia Cornwell, the bestselling crime author, famous for her novels featuring Dr. Kay Scarpetta, medical examiner. In the early 1990s, she visited the subterranean unit during a tour of the academy. She recalled being distinctly unimpressed. An analyst told her that ViCAP didn’t contain much information. The police weren’t sending in many cases.

“I remember walking into a room at the FBI and there was one PC on a desk,” said Cornwell, who had once worked as a computer analyst. “That was ViCAP.” A senior FBI official had told Cornwell that the academy, of which ViCAP was a small part, was in a financial crunch. She contacted Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, a friend, and told him of the academy’s troubles. In 1993, Hatch shepherded a measure through Congress to put more money into the academy — and ViCAP.

As the money made its way to the bomb shelter, the FBI conducted a “business review.” It found that local cops were sending the agency only 3 to 7 percent of homicides nationwide. The miniscule staff — about 10 people — could not even handle that load, and was not entering the cases on a timely basis. Cops on the street saw the system as a “black hole,” according to “Cold Case Homicide,” a criminal investigation handbook.

The FBI decided to kill the program. They picked Art Meister to be the hit man.

***

Meister spent much of his career at the FBI busting organized crime, beginning at the New Jersey field office. He rose through the ranks to supervise a national squad of more than 30 agents, investigating mob activities at home and overseas. He had no real experience with behavioral analysis or databases. But he did have an analytical approach that his superiors admired. They gave him instructions: “If it doesn’t work, do away with it. Kill it,” recalled Meister, now a security consultant with the Halle Barry Group.

Meister heard plenty of complaints. At one conference of police officers from across the country, a cop pulled Meister aside to talk about the program. “I’ve used it and all it gives me is bullshit leads,” the officer told him. “The general perception was by and large that the program didn’t work,” Meister said.

But instead of killing ViCAP, Meister became the system’s unlikely champion. Even with its small staff, the program was connecting far-flung law-enforcement agencies. The 189 questions had been slimmed to 95 — making it easier to fill out the form. Meister used the new funding from Hatch’s bill to reach out to 10 large jurisdictions to persuade them to install terminals that could connect with the database. By 1997, the system was receiving 1,500 or so cases per year — a record, though still a fraction of the violent crimes committed.

Meister saw the potential for the database to help solve sexual-assault crimes. He pushed the development of new questions specifically for sexual-assault cases. They weren’t added to the system until after his departure in 2001. “I felt it would really pay off dividends,” Meister said. “There are a lot more serial rapists than serial killers.”

But he found it difficult to make headway. Top officials showed no real interest in the program. After all, it was designed to help local law enforcement, not the agency. Meister called ViCAP “the furthest planet from the sun” — the last in line to get funds from the FBI. His efforts to improve it “were met with skepticism and bureaucratic politics. That’s what drove me nuts,” he said.

By the time he left, the program was muddling along. “ViCAP never got the support that it needs and deserves.” Meister said. “It’s unfortunate.”

***

On July 13, 2007, at 4 in the morning, a 15-year-old girl was sleeping in her bedroom in Chelmsford, a former factory town in northeastern Massachusetts bisected by Interstate 495.

She was startled awake when a man dressed in black with a ninja mask pressed his hand against her face. He placed a knife to her throat and told her “If you make any noise, I’ll fucking kill you.”

The girl screamed, rousing her mother and father. The parents rushed in, fighting with the man until they subdued him. Adam Leroy Lane, a truck driver from North Carolina, was arrested. In his truck, Massachusetts police found knives, cord and a DVD of “Hunting Humans,” a 2002 horror film.

Analysts for ViCAP, which has a special initiative to track killings along the nation’s highways, determined that the Massachusetts attack was similar to an earlier murder that had been committed in New Jersey. Acting on the tip, New Jersey state police detectives interviewed Lane in his jail cell. Lane confessed to killing Monica Massaro, a 38-year-old woman, in her home in the town of Bloomsbury — just a few blocks off Interstate 78. Lane, dubbed the Highway Killer, was connected via DNA samples to a killing and a violent attack in Pennsylvania; both women lived near interstates. Lane is now serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania.

New Jersey State Police Detective Geoff Noble said his case had been stalled. But once ViCAP connected Noble to Massachusetts police officers, they provided him a receipt that placed Lane at the truck stop in the small town where Massaro was killed. And when Noble confronted Lane, the killer started talking. Under a state attorney general’s directive, all New Jersey law enforcement agencies are supposed to report serial crimes to ViCAP. “The information provided by ViCAP was absolutely critical,” Noble said. “Without ViCAP, that case may have not ever been solved.”

FBI officials said the case, one of three success stories provided to ProPublica, showed the critical role of the database. (The other two: The case of Israel Keyes, a murderer who committed suicide after his arrest in Alaska in 2012 and has been linked to 11 killings; and that of Bruce Mendenhall, a trucker now serving a life sentence in Tennessee who was linked to the murder of four women in 2007.) “Given what we have, it’s a very successful program,” Burke said.

But in a dozen interviews with current and former police investigators and analysts across the country, most said they had not heard of ViCAP, or had seen little benefit from using it. Among sex-crimes detectives, none reported having been rewarded with a result from the system. “I’m not sending stuff off to ViCAP because I don’t even know what that is,” said Sgt. Peter Mahuna of the Portland, Oregon, Police Department. “I have never used ViCAP,” said Sgt. Elizabeth Donegan of Austin, Texas. “We’re not trained on it. I don’t know what it entails of whether it would be useful for us.”

Even Joanne Archambault, the director of the police training organization who sees the potential of ViCAP, didn’t use it when she ran the sex-crimes unit at the San Diego Police Department: “In all the years I worked these crimes, we never submitted information to ViCAP,” she said. “As a sex-crime supervisor, we invested time in effort that had a payout.”

Local authorities’ skepticism is reflected in the FBI’s statistics. In 2013, police submitted 240 cases involving sexual assault to the system. The FBI recorded 79,770 forcible rapes that year. Local agencies entered information on 232 homicides. The FBI recorded 14,196 murders.

“It's disappointing and embarrassing,” said Greg Cooper, a retired FBI agent who directed the ViCAP unit before becoming the police chief in Provo, Utah. “The FBI has not adequately marketed the program and its services. And local law enforcement has not been committed to participating.”

Not all rapes or murders involved serial offenders, of course. But with ViCAP receiving information on only about 0.5 percent of such violent crimes, it struggles to identify those that do.

“Cops don’t want to do more paperwork,” said Jim Markey, a former Phoenix police detective and now a security consultant. “Anytime you ask for voluntary compliance, it won’t be a priority. It’s not going to happen.”

But at some agencies where ViCAP has been incorporated into policing, commanders have become staunch defenders of its utility. Major J.R. Burton, the commander of special investigations for the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office in Tampa, Florida, said detectives at his agency are mandated to enter information on violent crimes into the database. “I love ViCAP,” said Burton, who served on a board of local law enforcement officials that advises the FBI on the system. “There’s many cases where you don’t have DNA. How do you link them together?”

Burton said he understood the frustration that other police experience when they get no results back from the system. When pressed, Burton could not cite any investigations in his jurisdiction that had benefitted from the database. But he said the time and effort to use the system was worth it. “It allows you to communicate across the nation, whether serial homicide or serial rapist,” Burton said. “That’s awesome in my book.”

FBI officials said they had taken steps to address complaints. In July 2008, the program made the database accessible via the Web. Police can now enter their own searches, without having to rely on an FBI analyst, through any computer with an Internet connection. The program has also whittled down the number of questions. Graham says he tells police that it should take only about 30 minutes to enter the details of a case. “I tell them if they can fill out their taxes, they can fill out the ViCAP form,” Graham said.

Christine Weller, 12, was found dead by a river in British Columbia. A year later, Daryn Johnsrude, 16, was found bludgeoned to death. In July 1981, six children were killed in a month, ages six to 18. They were found strangled and beaten to death.

The killer: Clifford Olson, a career criminal, who eluded capture in part because the different jurisdictions where he committed his crimes had never communicated.

The murders prompted Canadian police officials to create a system to track and identify serial killers. After an initial effort failed, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent investigators to study the ViCAP program. They returned troubled by some aspects. The FBI system was not being used by many police agencies. Nor did it track sexual assaults. The Mounties decided to improve on the U.S. system by developing their own behavioral crime analysis tool — ViCLAS.

The ViCLAS system has three advantages over its American cousin: people, money and a legal mandate. More than a hundred officers and analysts work for the system, spread across the country. It’s funded at a reported cost of $14 million to $15 million per year. The most important development was that over the years, local legislative bodies passed laws making entry mandatory. All Canadian law enforcement agencies now file reports to the system.

The agency also greatly expanded the list of crimes that can be entered. Any crime that is “behaviorally rich” — usually an incident involving a criminal and a victim — can be entered into the database. It also created stringent quality control. A Canadian analyst who uncovers a link between crimes must submit the findings to a panel for review. Only then can the case be released to local agencies — reducing the chances for bad leads.

Today, Canada’s system has been repeatedly endorsed by senior police officials as an important tool in tracking down killers and rapists. The agency routinely publishes newsletters filled with stories about crimes that the system helped to solve. One study called ViCLAS the “gold standard” of such systems worldwide. The Mounties now license ViCLAS for an annual fee to police forces in Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The volume of information submitted has made the all the difference, Lawlor said. The system works when enough agencies enter cases to generate results. But agencies are reluctant to enter cases until they see results. “It’s a catch–22 situation,” Lawlor said. “If nothing goes in, then nothing can go out.”

When Burke, ViCAP’s program manager, speaks at national law enforcement conferences, he asks how many people in the audience have heard of his program. Typically only about one-half to two-thirds of the hands go up. A smaller percentage say they actually use it.

“We don’t have a club to force them to sign up with us,” Burke said.

The program’s main goal now is to ensure that the 100 largest police agencies in the country are enrolled. About 80 are. The agency continues to slowly develop its software. Training occurs monthly to encourage more participation.

The FBI doesn’t see the need for major changes to ViCAP, Burke explained. “It’s still supportive,” Burke said. “It’s still viable.”

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-latest-smear-campaign-against-bernie-sanders-collapsed-it-startedHow the Latest Smear Campaign Against Bernie Sanders Collapsed Before It Startedhttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104328550/0/alternet~How-the-Latest-Smear-Campaign-Against-Bernie-Sanders-Collapsed-Before-It-Started

The Vermont senator’s words were completely twisted. Here’s what he actually said.

This week, Bernie Sanders sat down with Vox.com for a lengthy interview on a variety of topics. One of the topics covered was the Vermont independent senator's views on immigration. Sanders' response to a question from Vox's Ezra Klein about whether the United States should have completely “open borders” has caused quite a bit of controversy. Here's the section in question:

KLEIN: You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ....

SANDERS: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

KLEIN: Really?

SANDERS: Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

KLEIN: But it would make ....

SANDERS: Excuse me ....

KLEIN: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

SANDERS: It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

The first blogger to pick up on this section and use it to bash Sanders was Vox's on Dylan Matthews, a young writer with a history of engaging in poorly researched conjecture. He wrote a post attacking Sanders, tweeting it out under the curious line that the senator “doesn't actually care about inequality” even though Sanders has spent much of his life fighting inequality in every dimension.

But the actual post is even stranger.

Matthews calls Sanders' view “ugly” because it treats American “lives as more valuable than the lives of foreigners,” and says he's “wrong about what the effects of an open-border policy would be on American workers.” Matthews cites a “Libertarian” website that claims the world GDP would increase between 50 to 150 percent and then a bunch of other random statistics to try to make the case that completely unlimited immigration would be positive for the United States.

At one point, he even throws in the example of Russian migration to Israel giving Israelis as a whole a higher standard of living. (He ignores that the influx caused such large social problems in Israel that the country sought billions in loans to assist it and caused a housing crisis that exacerbated the growth of settlements in Palestinian territory.)

The underyling point made by Klein and Matthews is also very strange: that the solution to global inequalities is for the United States and other rich countries to simply eliminate their borders and let everyone in. This ignores the problems that actually create global economic inequality: dysfunctional governing systems, exploitative supply chains and poor distribution of capital.

People don't come to the United States because as soon as they land on its shores, they are granted riches. Historically, they come here for access to jobs. When the jobs don't exist, they don't come here. During the Great Recession, both documented and undocumented immigration fell sharply. One of the practical results of the North American Free Trade Agreement was the collapse of the Mexican agricultural industry, which was flooded with highly subsidized agribusiness from the United States. What actually happened was that migration to the United States from Mexico dramatically increased, as workers tried to find new jobs to the north.

By Matthews' logic, it was good that NAFTA wiped out a section of the Mexican middle class, so they could risk their lives crossing a desert to come to the United States to be exploited for substandard-wage jobs rather than achieve the middle-class lifestyles they had in their own communities.

A number of other outlets joined in the pile-on after Matthews' missive, including ThinkProgress. But what was most interesting was the confirmation of Sanders' thesis that the idea of open borders is an ultra-right-wing Koch brothers idea. After he made his remarks, a number of right-libertarians wrote pieces slamming Sanders, including Daniel Bier of the so-called Foundation for Economic Education.

What's being lost in all of the sniping at Sanders is his actual record on immigration. Sanders is a son of a Polish Jewish migrant, and has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and ending detention quotas for undocumented immigrants. He vocally supported President Obama's immigration executive order and has called for going even further, such as including the parents of dreamers, putting him to the left of President Obama. Sanders voted in favor of 2013's comprehensive immigration reform bill, the primary piece of legislation immigrant advocates support. In 2003, he had a zero percent rating from the main anti-immigrant advocacy group, FAIR.

Despite all of this, it appears Sanders is being slammed for admitting a core truth about immigration in America: today, the corporate elite are advocates for more immigration not because they care about the hard-working families who risk everything to come here but because they absolutely do want workers to exploit for lower wages. The challenge for progressives is to be able to conduct a fair and humane immigration policy that defends human rights while not simply doing the bidding of Corporate America.

"I don’t think there’s any presidential candidate, none, who thinks we should open up the borders,” explained Sanders at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce later this week.

That's a level of nuance that may be lost on bloggers who were quick to criticize Sanders, but it's one that working people in America and abroad understand. For Vox, however, nuance may not be the most profitable. Moiz Syed, who works at Wikimedia, pointed out on Twitter that Matthews' hit piece on Sanders popped up alongside a sponsorship from Walmart.

The Vermont senator’s words were completely twisted. Here’s what he actually said.

This week, Bernie Sanders sat down with Vox.com for a lengthy interview on a variety of topics. One of the topics covered was the Vermont independent senator's views on immigration. Sanders' response to a question from Vox's Ezra Klein about whether the United States should have completely “open borders” has caused quite a bit of controversy. Here's the section in question:

KLEIN: You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing ....

SANDERS: Open borders? No, that's a Koch brothers proposal.

KLEIN: Really?

SANDERS: Of course. That's a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. ...

KLEIN: But it would make ....

SANDERS: Excuse me ....

KLEIN: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn't it?

SANDERS: It would make everybody in America poorer —you're doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don't think there's any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don't believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

The first blogger to pick up on this section and use it to bash Sanders was Vox's on Dylan Matthews, a young writer with a history of engaging in poorly researched conjecture. He wrote a post attacking Sanders, tweeting it out under the curious line that the senator “doesn't actually care about inequality” even though Sanders has spent much of his life fighting inequality in every dimension.

But the actual post is even stranger.

Matthews calls Sanders' view “ugly” because it treats American “lives as more valuable than the lives of foreigners,” and says he's “wrong about what the effects of an open-border policy would be on American workers.” Matthews cites a “Libertarian” website that claims the world GDP would increase between 50 to 150 percent and then a bunch of other random statistics to try to make the case that completely unlimited immigration would be positive for the United States.

At one point, he even throws in the example of Russian migration to Israel giving Israelis as a whole a higher standard of living. (He ignores that the influx caused such large social problems in Israel that the country sought billions in loans to assist it and caused a housing crisis that exacerbated the growth of settlements in Palestinian territory.)

The underyling point made by Klein and Matthews is also very strange: that the solution to global inequalities is for the United States and other rich countries to simply eliminate their borders and let everyone in. This ignores the problems that actually create global economic inequality: dysfunctional governing systems, exploitative supply chains and poor distribution of capital.

People don't come to the United States because as soon as they land on its shores, they are granted riches. Historically, they come here for access to jobs. When the jobs don't exist, they don't come here. During the Great Recession, both documented and undocumented immigration fell sharply. One of the practical results of the North American Free Trade Agreement was the collapse of the Mexican agricultural industry, which was flooded with highly subsidized agribusiness from the United States. What actually happened was that migration to the United States from Mexico dramatically increased, as workers tried to find new jobs to the north.

By Matthews' logic, it was good that NAFTA wiped out a section of the Mexican middle class, so they could risk their lives crossing a desert to come to the United States to be exploited for substandard-wage jobs rather than achieve the middle-class lifestyles they had in their own communities.

A number of other outlets joined in the pile-on after Matthews' missive, including ThinkProgress. But what was most interesting was the confirmation of Sanders' thesis that the idea of open borders is an ultra-right-wing Koch brothers idea. After he made his remarks, a number of right-libertarians wrote pieces slamming Sanders, including Daniel Bier of the so-called Foundation for Economic Education.

What's being lost in all of the sniping at Sanders is his actual record on immigration. Sanders is a son of a Polish Jewish migrant, and has spoken in favor of comprehensive immigration reform and ending detention quotas for undocumented immigrants. He vocally supported President Obama's immigration executive order and has called for going even further, such as including the parents of dreamers, putting him to the left of President Obama. Sanders voted in favor of 2013's comprehensive immigration reform bill, the primary piece of legislation immigrant advocates support. In 2003, he had a zero percent rating from the main anti-immigrant advocacy group, FAIR.

Despite all of this, it appears Sanders is being slammed for admitting a core truth about immigration in America: today, the corporate elite are advocates for more immigration not because they care about the hard-working families who risk everything to come here but because they absolutely do want workers to exploit for lower wages. The challenge for progressives is to be able to conduct a fair and humane immigration policy that defends human rights while not simply doing the bidding of Corporate America.

"I don’t think there’s any presidential candidate, none, who thinks we should open up the borders,” explained Sanders at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce later this week.

That's a level of nuance that may be lost on bloggers who were quick to criticize Sanders, but it's one that working people in America and abroad understand. For Vox, however, nuance may not be the most profitable. Moiz Syed, who works at Wikimedia, pointed out on Twitter that Matthews' hit piece on Sanders popped up alongside a sponsorship from Walmart.

I don’t know about you, but there are certain things that people say that, to me, signal right off that the person saying them is probably kind of an asshole, or generally kind of terrible in some other way. These are 11 of them off the top of my head, but I’m sure there are more, so feel free to leave your own “favorites” in the comments.

1. “The customer is always right.”

Okay, sure, it’s always a great idea to treat customers well. But there are a lot of people out there who have let this imaginary power go right to their heads, believing that it can make items that are not on the menu at a restaurant or not stocked “in the back” in a retail store appear as if by magic, simply by being incredibly rude to the person waiting on them.

Said people believe, quite firmly, that they are not subject to return polices. That they can go sit at the largest table in a crowded restaurant, with a party of two, without checking in with the hostess and then get furious when no one comes to take care of them because they’re not in the system. Alas, they are incorrect.

I have always felt that although these people likely imagine that acting this way makes everyone else think that they must be fabulously important, that they are generally small people with small lives whose only sense of power in the world is the thrill they get from being “always right” in situations where they are the customer. I would feel sorry for them if they were not such assholes.

FIRST OF ALL! Sorry, but Marilyn Monroe never actually said this. There is no record of her ever saying it. It did not happen. Much like almost every Marilyn Monroe-related Pinterest quote out there. To boot, even if you think it’s real, I’m not sure you want Marilyn Monroe to be your healthy relationship icon. Yes, she was very pretty and she had a hard life, but I am not so sure she made a lot of great relationship choices in her life.

Second–this sounds like an awfully unhealthy and potentially abusive/manipulative relationship to me. I mean, if that is the thing you’re going to open with? You’re basically saying, “I am a really horrible person some of the time, but you should put up with that because of how super great I am some of the time.” To me, that honestly sounds a more than a little exhausting. I also don’t subscribe to the whole narrative that really great people are super difficult and tempestuous always. I tend to prefer people who, when they are at their worst, leave other people alone.

3. Fat shaming is a public service.

In the comments section of every article about body acceptance, there are always a few people who will INSIST that they are performing a public service by being shitty to fat people, because if they don’t feel shamed for their bodies, how will they ever get healthy?

Even aside from the fact that it is absolute bullshit that all skinny people are healthier than all people who are overweight. I want to know what world these people are living in where they think people are not made to feel badly enough about being overweight? In what world do they live in where they imagine there is such a thing as constructive bullying? That is not a thing!

If it is desperately important to you to be shitty to people, at the very least do not try to frame this as any kind of favor you are doing them. At least have the decency to cop to being a giant asshole. Because trust me, exactly no one is buying any of that.

4. “I’m just so much more sensitive/emotional than other people are!”

Are you psychic? Do you have the ability to go into other people’s brains and determine how they feel about things compared to how you feel about things? Probably not!

People handle their emotions differently. Sure, maybe you’re the person who bursts into hysterical tears in the middle of a bar, and someone else is the person who cracks a joke. Maybe you like talking about your problems with other people, and maybe someone else prefers to work things out on their own. As shocking as it may seem, it is totally possible that other person feels just as deeply about things as you do, but that they simply don’t choose to express that the same way as you do.

It is pretty darned insensitive to assume that anyone who doesn’t handle their feelings and emotions the way you do just doesn’t have them, or doesn’t feel things as deeply as you do. It’s also, believe it or not, a pretty mean thing to say, which doesn’t make you sound more “sensitive” but does make you sound significantly less empathetic. Which, in my estimation, is a lot more important.

5. “This is biased! You’re supposed to just report the facts and let me draw my own conclusions!’

I mean this, of course, in reference not to reportage, but to opinion articles. I would be being dishonest if I wasn’t saying that this is a specific pet peeve of mine, as a person who writes her opinion for a living. It drives me right up the fucking wall.

This is a reasonable opinion to have if you are talking about straight news, from a newspaper, op-ed sections not included. It is not a reasonable thing to say about a blog post or an op-ed. It is not, in fact, my job to report the facts and let you draw your own conclusions (I always imagine this in the whiniest voice humanly possible). It is my job to read the facts, draw my own conclusions, and then write about them.

If you don’t understand the difference between straight news and opinion, that is not my fault or the fault of any other blogger or opinion columnist. It is your fault for not having paid attention in your 4th grade English class when you were taught about the different kinds of journalism. Also, if you cannot read an opinion article and “draw your own conclusions” you are an idiot and should probably wait on forming any conclusions until you fix that.

6. “IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE MY SPECIAL DAY!”

I’m not actually sure if this is a thing people say outside of reality television, but I firmly hope it is not. I feel like there is no way to refer to your wedding or your birthday, in all seriousness, as your “special day” without sounding like the most horrendous person on earth. It cannot be done. Never, ever refer to anything as your special day.

Any reason you have for not tipping is an asshole reason. This is simply not a hole you want to dig yourself into. You cannot spin it in a way that makes you come out looking not terrible. Can you think that restaurants should just pay waiters and waitresses more? Sure! That is a reasonable opinion to have. But you know whose fault it isn’t that they don’t? The person waiting on you! Also, trust, you withholding your tip isn’t going to make that happen.

If you have this opinion, really, you are just best off keeping it to yourself. Certainly, do not, under any circumstances, bring this up on a date.

If there were any possible way to voice one’s opposition to tipping without sounding like the biggest ass on the face of the earth, it is likely that someone far more clever than you are would have come up with it by now. You are probably not going to be the first person in the history of the world to do this, so don’t even try.

8. “You can’t criticize me! I have a right to free speech!”

Here is what the first amendment means–outside of say, shouting “Fire” in a crowded building and conspiring to commit a crime–you are, indeed, free to say whatever you want, express whatever opinions you want, without going to jail.

However–and this may surprise some people–individual citizens who are not empowered by the state, cannot actually infringe upon your first amendment rights. Criticizing your opinions, like it or not, is also free speech. Freedom of speech does not mean that no one can criticize you or your stupid opinions on things, or think you are an asshole as a result of them. Freedom of speech does not mean the right to no consequences whatsoever for your speech. It means, again, that you cannot be thrown in jail for it.

Even “political correctness” doesn’t actually infringe upon your right to free speech. Because someone criticizing you for using a racial slur is also expressing their right to free speech. Besides, if you can’t back up your opinion with anything other than “Well, it’s my right to say/think that because FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” you might want to rethink that opinion. Just as a tip.

One of the saddest things in the world are people who believe they are somehow contributing to a stand-up show by heckling. That they are “keeping the comics on their toes” and alerting them to things they think are not funny. How self-important can someone possibly be? It’s weird.

I mean, kudos to comics who handle heckling well, but that doesn’t mean the person doing it isn’t a giant asshole. It’s certainly not a thing worth defending as some kind of art form, as I’ve heard some do before. At the very least, if you are going to pull shit like that, do not act as though it is somehow a kind thing to do. Admit you’re an asshole.

10. “They’re just jealous of me!”

Okay. Sure! This can happen sometimes. I’m not saying it doesn’t. But unless you are incredibly impressive, it is unlikely that this is always the case when you have problems with people. Even if it really is the case, you might want to refrain from saying it too often, as people may mistake you for a Real Housewife of Somewhere.

11. “I just say what everyone else is thinking!”

It is very rare that someone who says this proudly has not just said something incredibly insulting to another person for pretty much no reason. This is not necessarily something you want to be proud of.

Sometimes people don’t say everything they’re thinking out loud, because they don’t actually want to hurt other people’s feelings for no good reason. Also, it is weird to assume that everyone else is just as big of an asshole as you are, but that you are the only person with the courage to express your inner asshole nature. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you are just a jerk.

I don’t know about you, but there are certain things that people say that, to me, signal right off that the person saying them is probably kind of an asshole, or generally kind of terrible in some other way. These are 11 of them off the top of my head, but I’m sure there are more, so feel free to leave your own “favorites” in the comments.

1. “The customer is always right.”

Okay, sure, it’s always a great idea to treat customers well. But there are a lot of people out there who have let this imaginary power go right to their heads, believing that it can make items that are not on the menu at a restaurant or not stocked “in the back” in a retail store appear as if by magic, simply by being incredibly rude to the person waiting on them.

Said people believe, quite firmly, that they are not subject to return polices. That they can go sit at the largest table in a crowded restaurant, with a party of two, without checking in with the hostess and then get furious when no one comes to take care of them because they’re not in the system. Alas, they are incorrect.

I have always felt that although these people likely imagine that acting this way makes everyone else think that they must be fabulously important, that they are generally small people with small lives whose only sense of power in the world is the thrill they get from being “always right” in situations where they are the customer. I would feel sorry for them if they were not such assholes.

FIRST OF ALL! Sorry, but Marilyn Monroe never actually said this. There is no record of her ever saying it. It did not happen. Much like almost every Marilyn Monroe-related Pinterest quote out there. To boot, even if you think it’s real, I’m not sure you want Marilyn Monroe to be your healthy relationship icon. Yes, she was very pretty and she had a hard life, but I am not so sure she made a lot of great relationship choices in her life.

Second–this sounds like an awfully unhealthy and potentially abusive/manipulative relationship to me. I mean, if that is the thing you’re going to open with? You’re basically saying, “I am a really horrible person some of the time, but you should put up with that because of how super great I am some of the time.” To me, that honestly sounds a more than a little exhausting. I also don’t subscribe to the whole narrative that really great people are super difficult and tempestuous always. I tend to prefer people who, when they are at their worst, leave other people alone.

3. Fat shaming is a public service.

In the comments section of every article about body acceptance, there are always a few people who will INSIST that they are performing a public service by being shitty to fat people, because if they don’t feel shamed for their bodies, how will they ever get healthy?

Even aside from the fact that it is absolute bullshit that all skinny people are healthier than all people who are overweight. I want to know what world these people are living in where they think people are not made to feel badly enough about being overweight? In what world do they live in where they imagine there is such a thing as constructive bullying? That is not a thing!

If it is desperately important to you to be shitty to people, at the very least do not try to frame this as any kind of favor you are doing them. At least have the decency to cop to being a giant asshole. Because trust me, exactly no one is buying any of that.

4. “I’m just so much more sensitive/emotional than other people are!”

Are you psychic? Do you have the ability to go into other people’s brains and determine how they feel about things compared to how you feel about things? Probably not!

People handle their emotions differently. Sure, maybe you’re the person who bursts into hysterical tears in the middle of a bar, and someone else is the person who cracks a joke. Maybe you like talking about your problems with other people, and maybe someone else prefers to work things out on their own. As shocking as it may seem, it is totally possible that other person feels just as deeply about things as you do, but that they simply don’t choose to express that the same way as you do.

It is pretty darned insensitive to assume that anyone who doesn’t handle their feelings and emotions the way you do just doesn’t have them, or doesn’t feel things as deeply as you do. It’s also, believe it or not, a pretty mean thing to say, which doesn’t make you sound more “sensitive” but does make you sound significantly less empathetic. Which, in my estimation, is a lot more important.

5. “This is biased! You’re supposed to just report the facts and let me draw my own conclusions!’

I mean this, of course, in reference not to reportage, but to opinion articles. I would be being dishonest if I wasn’t saying that this is a specific pet peeve of mine, as a person who writes her opinion for a living. It drives me right up the fucking wall.

This is a reasonable opinion to have if you are talking about straight news, from a newspaper, op-ed sections not included. It is not a reasonable thing to say about a blog post or an op-ed. It is not, in fact, my job to report the facts and let you draw your own conclusions (I always imagine this in the whiniest voice humanly possible). It is my job to read the facts, draw my own conclusions, and then write about them.

If you don’t understand the difference between straight news and opinion, that is not my fault or the fault of any other blogger or opinion columnist. It is your fault for not having paid attention in your 4th grade English class when you were taught about the different kinds of journalism. Also, if you cannot read an opinion article and “draw your own conclusions” you are an idiot and should probably wait on forming any conclusions until you fix that.

6. “IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE MY SPECIAL DAY!”

I’m not actually sure if this is a thing people say outside of reality television, but I firmly hope it is not. I feel like there is no way to refer to your wedding or your birthday, in all seriousness, as your “special day” without sounding like the most horrendous person on earth. It cannot be done. Never, ever refer to anything as your special day.

Any reason you have for not tipping is an asshole reason. This is simply not a hole you want to dig yourself into. You cannot spin it in a way that makes you come out looking not terrible. Can you think that restaurants should just pay waiters and waitresses more? Sure! That is a reasonable opinion to have. But you know whose fault it isn’t that they don’t? The person waiting on you! Also, trust, you withholding your tip isn’t going to make that happen.

If you have this opinion, really, you are just best off keeping it to yourself. Certainly, do not, under any circumstances, bring this up on a date.

If there were any possible way to voice one’s opposition to tipping without sounding like the biggest ass on the face of the earth, it is likely that someone far more clever than you are would have come up with it by now. You are probably not going to be the first person in the history of the world to do this, so don’t even try.

8. “You can’t criticize me! I have a right to free speech!”

Here is what the first amendment means–outside of say, shouting “Fire” in a crowded building and conspiring to commit a crime–you are, indeed, free to say whatever you want, express whatever opinions you want, without going to jail.

However–and this may surprise some people–individual citizens who are not empowered by the state, cannot actually infringe upon your first amendment rights. Criticizing your opinions, like it or not, is also free speech. Freedom of speech does not mean that no one can criticize you or your stupid opinions on things, or think you are an asshole as a result of them. Freedom of speech does not mean the right to no consequences whatsoever for your speech. It means, again, that you cannot be thrown in jail for it.

Even “political correctness” doesn’t actually infringe upon your right to free speech. Because someone criticizing you for using a racial slur is also expressing their right to free speech. Besides, if you can’t back up your opinion with anything other than “Well, it’s my right to say/think that because FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” you might want to rethink that opinion. Just as a tip.

One of the saddest things in the world are people who believe they are somehow contributing to a stand-up show by heckling. That they are “keeping the comics on their toes” and alerting them to things they think are not funny. How self-important can someone possibly be? It’s weird.

I mean, kudos to comics who handle heckling well, but that doesn’t mean the person doing it isn’t a giant asshole. It’s certainly not a thing worth defending as some kind of art form, as I’ve heard some do before. At the very least, if you are going to pull shit like that, do not act as though it is somehow a kind thing to do. Admit you’re an asshole.

10. “They’re just jealous of me!”

Okay. Sure! This can happen sometimes. I’m not saying it doesn’t. But unless you are incredibly impressive, it is unlikely that this is always the case when you have problems with people. Even if it really is the case, you might want to refrain from saying it too often, as people may mistake you for a Real Housewife of Somewhere.

11. “I just say what everyone else is thinking!”

It is very rare that someone who says this proudly has not just said something incredibly insulting to another person for pretty much no reason. This is not necessarily something you want to be proud of.

Sometimes people don’t say everything they’re thinking out loud, because they don’t actually want to hurt other people’s feelings for no good reason. Also, it is weird to assume that everyone else is just as big of an asshole as you are, but that you are the only person with the courage to express your inner asshole nature. Maybe it’s you. Maybe you are just a jerk.

Police officer Ryan Hall was fired after cell photo video emerged showing that he lied to justify his use of force.

A former Georgia police officer was indicted this week after cell phone video showed that he lied to justify force against a 69-year-old black man who was moving into his new home. While responding to a suspected burglary call on May 2, 2014 with at least three other officers, then-Clayton County police officer Ryan Hall said that he attempted to arrest 69-year-old Dhoruba Bin-Wahad because he “lied” about a second burglar being in the home.

Although the “fellow burglar” turned out to be another police officer, Hall claimed Bin-Wahad was “uncooperative and verbally argumentative.”

But cell phone video recorded by witnesses showed that Hall did not have justification when he slammed Bin-Wahad’s head into the concrete.

“I felt like I was humiliated in front of all my neighbors or whoever was watching,” Bin-Wahad recalled. “They might have thought I was a criminal or someone the police followed to this residence, so I didn’t want to move in.”

Hall was fired by Clayton County after cell photo video emerged showing that he lied to justify his use of force. On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted Hall on a misdemeanor charge of battery against the elderly. Bond was set at $2,000.

“I know I should feel vindicated, but sadly I feel humbled in a way because at one point I didn’t want to move into the house anymore,” Bin-Wahad explained.

A second grand jury will determine whether Hall will face charges for falsifying a police report. Attorneys for Bin-Wahad have also filed formal charges against three other officers who responded to the call on May 2.

“I don’t think he understands the full significance of what he did, and he probably believes in his mind that he was right,” Bin-Wahad noted this week.

Police officer Ryan Hall was fired after cell photo video emerged showing that he lied to justify his use of force.

A former Georgia police officer was indicted this week after cell phone video showed that he lied to justify force against a 69-year-old black man who was moving into his new home. While responding to a suspected burglary call on May 2, 2014 with at least three other officers, then-Clayton County police officer Ryan Hall said that he attempted to arrest 69-year-old Dhoruba Bin-Wahad because he “lied” about a second burglar being in the home.

Although the “fellow burglar” turned out to be another police officer, Hall claimed Bin-Wahad was “uncooperative and verbally argumentative.”

But cell phone video recorded by witnesses showed that Hall did not have justification when he slammed Bin-Wahad’s head into the concrete.

“I felt like I was humiliated in front of all my neighbors or whoever was watching,” Bin-Wahad recalled. “They might have thought I was a criminal or someone the police followed to this residence, so I didn’t want to move in.”

Hall was fired by Clayton County after cell photo video emerged showing that he lied to justify his use of force. On Wednesday, a grand jury indicted Hall on a misdemeanor charge of battery against the elderly. Bond was set at $2,000.

“I know I should feel vindicated, but sadly I feel humbled in a way because at one point I didn’t want to move into the house anymore,” Bin-Wahad explained.

A second grand jury will determine whether Hall will face charges for falsifying a police report. Attorneys for Bin-Wahad have also filed formal charges against three other officers who responded to the call on May 2.

“I don’t think he understands the full significance of what he did, and he probably believes in his mind that he was right,” Bin-Wahad noted this week.

In the movies, we jump sleep with practically every interviewee. Strange how the men don’t get that treatment.

A couple of years ago, my editor told me to interview a well-known actor. I mentioned this to a friend, and he smirked knowingly. “Better cancel your evening plans. I know at least three female journalists who slept with him after interviewing him,” he said. “Well, I don’t know them, but I’ve heard the stories.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh the stories. Well, that sounds totally credible. Anyway, it’s never even occurred to me to sleep with an interviewee,” I said.

“Really?” he said, amazed.

I was now more intrigued by his amazement at my failure to shag on the job than the prospect of a celebrity trying to seduce me. Was this yet another part of journalism I’d somehow missed out on, like learning shorthand? No, of course not. (Seriously, have you seen most journalists? No one’s trying to sleep with us – as a demographic, we’re a riposte to Darwinism.) But I eventually understood my friend’s amazement: among all the lessons to be gleaned from Hollywood movies, there are few that have become as established as the idea that female journalists have sex with the people they’re writing about.

Judd Apatow’s comedy Trainwreck, which stars and is written by Amy Schumer, will come to the UK next month. Despite its pretence to edginess, it is utterly conventional, not least in its depiction of – can you guess? – female journalists. The movie tells the story of Amy, a journalist who is assigned by her editor to write a profile of a sexy sports doctor. (All sports doctors are sexy – this, too, is an ironclad truth in pop culture.) So off she goes and promptly gets drunk with the doctor – and has sex with him – because how else do female journalists get to know their subjects?

In 1940’s His Girl Friday, Hildy Johnson was so engrossed in her work, she didn’t even notice the romantic machinations around her masterminded by her ex-husband – and he was played by Cary Grant, for heaven’s sake. Now, the idea that female journalists work by spreading their legs has become so established, it is damn near a trope.

Whereas male journalists in movies work by using their malicious minds (Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler) or unimpeachable morality (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men, George Clooney and David Strathairn in Good Night and Good Luck), their female counterparts use a part of their anatomy that has nothing to do with their brain. Sometimes they do it to get a story, sometimes it just happens because, well, that’s what it’s like being a female journalist: you go to the office and, next thing you know, your knickers are around your ankles.

Just off the top of my head, here is a selection of fictional female journalists who sleep their way through their jobs: Chelsea (Rosario Dawson) has sex in a club bathroom with the celebrity actor (Chris Rock) she’s profiling in Top Five; in Crazy Heart, Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) rescues an alcoholic country singer (Jeff Bridges) she’s interviewing through the redemptive power of her magical vagina (an essential tool for female journalists, along with serious spectacles and an ugly jacket); in Three Kings, Cathy (Judy Greer) trades sex for stories with Clooney – which, to be fair, is an experience all female journalists have had; in the excellent Nightcrawler, TV news editor Nina (Rene Russo) sleeps with a creepy journalist (Jake Gyllenhaal) in order to maintain his loyalty; Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) swiftly ends up in bed with Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) in Anchorman; Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) ends up having sex with, if memory serves, just about everyone in Adaptation, which must have come as a surprise to the real-life Orlean, a respected journalist; poor TV producer Jane (Holly Hunter) tries her best to sleep with airheaded anchor Tom (William Hurt) in Broadcast News, but life keeps thwarting them. Even Lois Lane fell for Superman, after all.

Then there are the female journalists who are specifically assigned to manipulate or sleep with men, in such films as How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days and the TV adaptation of Sex and the City, in which Carrie Bradshaw’s entire beat is her bedroom, even though that was certainly not the case in the original columns by Candace Bushnell.

Occasionally, the depiction of the women journalists in movies is tied to their source material, which proves just how deep-rooted this cliche is, beloved beyond Hollywood studios. In Thank You for Smoking, Washington journalist Heather (Katie Holmes) maliciously seduces the poor tobacco lobbyist for the sake of a story. Bridget Jones’s only news scoop comes thanks to help from Mark Darcy, who she ends up snogging on a street corner. In the utterly tedious The Devil Wears Prada, fashion journalist Andy (Anne Hathaway) ends up in bed with a photographer during fashion week, even though I can speak from personal experience that fashion week is so sexless it is essentially a nunnery with more expensive clothes.

And of course, there’s House of Cards, both UK and US versions, in which a young female journalist engages in kinky sex with a creepy politician for a story. Presumably Lord Sewel had been watching House of Cards a little too keenly when he was caught this week boasting that he had slept with a female BBC journalist. “She was very young and it was very pleasant,” he said, like a cut-price Francis Urquhart. The journalist swiftly denied this nonsense.

To a certain extent, the depiction of female journalists in films reflects how movies in general belittle women who work these days. Women’s jobs, today’s Hollywood movies imply, are a mere hurdle they need to scale before discovering the meaning of life (marriage). But the Hollywood obsession with female journalists’ sex lives feels especially ridiculous as there are few professionals who film folk encounter more than journalists. So this idea that female journalists are all just dying to jump into bed with them is a fascinating insight into certain film-makers’ tragic sexual fantasies.

Incidentally, I didn’t sleep with the actor – he didn’t even make a move on me, thank God. In fact, the only personal interaction we had afterwards was when he called the next week to berate me for misspelling his ex-girlfriend’s surname in the paper. Honestly, you could have cut the sexual tension with a knife.

In the movies, we jump sleep with practically every interviewee. Strange how the men don’t get that treatment.

A couple of years ago, my editor told me to interview a well-known actor. I mentioned this to a friend, and he smirked knowingly. “Better cancel your evening plans. I know at least three female journalists who slept with him after interviewing him,” he said. “Well, I don’t know them, but I’ve heard the stories.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh the stories. Well, that sounds totally credible. Anyway, it’s never even occurred to me to sleep with an interviewee,” I said.

“Really?” he said, amazed.

I was now more intrigued by his amazement at my failure to shag on the job than the prospect of a celebrity trying to seduce me. Was this yet another part of journalism I’d somehow missed out on, like learning shorthand? No, of course not. (Seriously, have you seen most journalists? No one’s trying to sleep with us – as a demographic, we’re a riposte to Darwinism.) But I eventually understood my friend’s amazement: among all the lessons to be gleaned from Hollywood movies, there are few that have become as established as the idea that female journalists have sex with the people they’re writing about.

Judd Apatow’s comedy Trainwreck, which stars and is written by Amy Schumer, will come to the UK next month. Despite its pretence to edginess, it is utterly conventional, not least in its depiction of – can you guess? – female journalists. The movie tells the story of Amy, a journalist who is assigned by her editor to write a profile of a sexy sports doctor. (All sports doctors are sexy – this, too, is an ironclad truth in pop culture.) So off she goes and promptly gets drunk with the doctor – and has sex with him – because how else do female journalists get to know their subjects?

In 1940’s His Girl Friday, Hildy Johnson was so engrossed in her work, she didn’t even notice the romantic machinations around her masterminded by her ex-husband – and he was played by Cary Grant, for heaven’s sake. Now, the idea that female journalists work by spreading their legs has become so established, it is damn near a trope.

Whereas male journalists in movies work by using their malicious minds (Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole, Jake Gyllenhaal in Nightcrawler) or unimpeachable morality (Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in All the President’s Men, George Clooney and David Strathairn in Good Night and Good Luck), their female counterparts use a part of their anatomy that has nothing to do with their brain. Sometimes they do it to get a story, sometimes it just happens because, well, that’s what it’s like being a female journalist: you go to the office and, next thing you know, your knickers are around your ankles.

Just off the top of my head, here is a selection of fictional female journalists who sleep their way through their jobs: Chelsea (Rosario Dawson) has sex in a club bathroom with the celebrity actor (Chris Rock) she’s profiling in Top Five; in Crazy Heart, Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal) rescues an alcoholic country singer (Jeff Bridges) she’s interviewing through the redemptive power of her magical vagina (an essential tool for female journalists, along with serious spectacles and an ugly jacket); in Three Kings, Cathy (Judy Greer) trades sex for stories with Clooney – which, to be fair, is an experience all female journalists have had; in the excellent Nightcrawler, TV news editor Nina (Rene Russo) sleeps with a creepy journalist (Jake Gyllenhaal) in order to maintain his loyalty; Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) swiftly ends up in bed with Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) in Anchorman; Susan Orlean (Meryl Streep) ends up having sex with, if memory serves, just about everyone in Adaptation, which must have come as a surprise to the real-life Orlean, a respected journalist; poor TV producer Jane (Holly Hunter) tries her best to sleep with airheaded anchor Tom (William Hurt) in Broadcast News, but life keeps thwarting them. Even Lois Lane fell for Superman, after all.

Then there are the female journalists who are specifically assigned to manipulate or sleep with men, in such films as How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days and the TV adaptation of Sex and the City, in which Carrie Bradshaw’s entire beat is her bedroom, even though that was certainly not the case in the original columns by Candace Bushnell.

Occasionally, the depiction of the women journalists in movies is tied to their source material, which proves just how deep-rooted this cliche is, beloved beyond Hollywood studios. In Thank You for Smoking, Washington journalist Heather (Katie Holmes) maliciously seduces the poor tobacco lobbyist for the sake of a story. Bridget Jones’s only news scoop comes thanks to help from Mark Darcy, who she ends up snogging on a street corner. In the utterly tedious The Devil Wears Prada, fashion journalist Andy (Anne Hathaway) ends up in bed with a photographer during fashion week, even though I can speak from personal experience that fashion week is so sexless it is essentially a nunnery with more expensive clothes.

And of course, there’s House of Cards, both UK and US versions, in which a young female journalist engages in kinky sex with a creepy politician for a story. Presumably Lord Sewel had been watching House of Cards a little too keenly when he was caught this week boasting that he had slept with a female BBC journalist. “She was very young and it was very pleasant,” he said, like a cut-price Francis Urquhart. The journalist swiftly denied this nonsense.

To a certain extent, the depiction of female journalists in films reflects how movies in general belittle women who work these days. Women’s jobs, today’s Hollywood movies imply, are a mere hurdle they need to scale before discovering the meaning of life (marriage). But the Hollywood obsession with female journalists’ sex lives feels especially ridiculous as there are few professionals who film folk encounter more than journalists. So this idea that female journalists are all just dying to jump into bed with them is a fascinating insight into certain film-makers’ tragic sexual fantasies.

Incidentally, I didn’t sleep with the actor – he didn’t even make a move on me, thank God. In fact, the only personal interaction we had afterwards was when he called the next week to berate me for misspelling his ex-girlfriend’s surname in the paper. Honestly, you could have cut the sexual tension with a knife.

Why is the anti-choice movement even taken seriously as a political movement by the media?

For the past few years, conservatives have been diligently trying to put a kinder, gentler face on the anti-choice movement. They try to hide that they’re a bunch of ghouls stuck in a titillation-disgust obsession with female sexuality and reproductive function. Instead, they claim to be a bunch of well-meaning church ladies just trying to help those poor young ladies realize that their true calling is motherhood.

But a few weeks ago, the mask got ripped off when a radical anti-choice group going by the name Center for Medical Progress released a bunch of misleadingly edited videos accusing Planned Parenthood of selling fetal body parts in some kind of black market profiteering scheme. The accusations got a momentary blip of incredulous media coverage before the debunking started. To summarize: the people in the videos are actually talking about donating fetal tissue to research (something even Republicans have supported in the past). The people behind the stunt are the same kind of loony right-wing nuts who love trading in bizarre conspiracy theories.

The real question here is why the anti-choice movement is taken seriously at all as a political movement by the media. The movement has a long history of pushing breathless and implausible urban legends that are more at home on some conspiracy theory website than in grown-up politics. Reproductive health care sits at an intersection of human sexuality and medicine, and anti-choicers really love wallowing in the ghastly and the sensational, even if neither has any relationship to reality.

Here are some of the more ridiculous and gross examples.

1. 'The Silent Scream'

The Silent Scream is a bit of religious right propaganda about abortion created in 1984. Simply looking at the video cover, with its horror movie font and pixelated image of a screaming face, should give you an idea of what level of ridiculousness we’re dealing with. The movie, which claims that a 12-week-old fetus “screams” when it is aborted, is so over the top it reads like camp to all but its intended audience of naïve conservative Christians. “The Silent Scream has the appeal of a snuff movie,” said a 1985 review in the New Republic, which also noted its “inappropriate horror B-movie title roll."

2. 'Hooking Kids On Sex'

The Center for Medical Progress is far from the first group making lurid accusations that Planned Parenthood engages in sinister behavior for profit. In 2013, the American Life League (ALL) put out a breathless video titled Hooking Kids On Sex.

“Just as the goal of a drug dealer is to make drug addicts,” the narrator explains, “Planned Parenthood’s goal is to make sex addicts.” The video calls masturbation a “gateway drug” and argues that the purpose of tricking teens into thinking they like sex is to get them to buy up more contraception, which ALL believes is designed to fail, so the young people then have to get even more expensive abortions. Ka-CHING! The flaw in this brilliant conspiracy theory, just like the new one about fetal tissue selling, is that Planned Parenthood is a non-profit, making the profit part of the equation nonsensical.

3. Phony video accusing Planned Parenthood of child sex trafficking.

In 2011, the group Live Action (of which the Center for Medical Progress is a spin-off) made a splash in anti-choice circles with a video purporting to prove that Planned Parenthood engages in child sex trafficking. The video claimed to show undercover investigators posing as pimps who admit to trafficking minors.

The fact that the Planned Parenthood employees continued talking to the phony pimps was held out as evidence of collusion and a cover-up. It was neither. The employees did talk to the self-reported criminals, but then immediately alerted the FBI to the alleged sex trafficking. It also soon became evident that few, if any, of the “colluding” employees actually believed the ruse. But anti-choicers disregarded the obvious conclusion, because they prefer to believe whatever crazy nonsense they can about Planned Parenthood.

4. Abortion 'reversal' scam.

This gambit is one of the loonier anti-choice contrivances to come around in recent years. Yes, they are telling women abortions can be reversed. The weirdness started with an anti-choice doctor named George Delgado, who claimed he could “reverse” medication abortions with shots of progesterone he said would save the embryo before the medications expelled it.

It's not possible, of course, and Delgado's "evidence" that there is any demand for this supposed procedure is iffy, to say the least. This is just more anti-choice theatrics. In reality, 95% of women say their abortion was the right choice for them.

5. The pill kills.

Artificial progesterone is the hero of these mythical tales of “abortion reversal,” but when the same hormone is used (effectively, I might add) to prevent pregnancy, it becomes the demon that does nothing but bring terror and misery. Progesterone is used in birth control pills to suppress ovulation, so women can have sex without getting pregnant. Anti-choice activists oppose this, and so have created a dizzying number of lurid horror stories of all the bad things that will happen if women take the pill.

The American Life League has an annual event, tagged to the anniversary of the legalization of contraception by the Supreme Court, called The Pill Kills. Every year, they highlight some other supposed victim of this killer pill. The pill kills marriage! The pill kills babies! (Anti-choicers claim progesterone “kills” embryos. Yes, the same drug Delgado injects in women to “save” embryos.) The pill kills the environment! (Unlike those harmless fossil fuels.) The pill kills women! (They neglect to mention the stroke risk for frequent pregnancy is much higher.)

The conspiracy theories and theatrics of the anti-choice movement are ridiculous, of course. Yet they serve a serious purpose. The melodrama and lurid claims are meant to distract the public from a serious discussion about important public health issues, like contraception access and safe abortion care. All the blood and orgies talk forces pro-choicers to waste their time debunking right-wing urban legends, instead of focusing the discussion on less exciting but more realistic topics like how empowering women to choose when and if they give birth improves women’s educational and employment opportunities. Important stuff, but boring compared to screeching right-wing nonsense about black market fetal parts and Planned Parenthood pimp orgies. Which is, of course, the point.

Why is the anti-choice movement even taken seriously as a political movement by the media?

For the past few years, conservatives have been diligently trying to put a kinder, gentler face on the anti-choice movement. They try to hide that they’re a bunch of ghouls stuck in a titillation-disgust obsession with female sexuality and reproductive function. Instead, they claim to be a bunch of well-meaning church ladies just trying to help those poor young ladies realize that their true calling is motherhood.

But a few weeks ago, the mask got ripped off when a radical anti-choice group going by the name Center for Medical Progress released a bunch of misleadingly edited videos accusing Planned Parenthood of selling fetal body parts in some kind of black market profiteering scheme. The accusations got a momentary blip of incredulous media coverage before the debunking started. To summarize: the people in the videos are actually talking about donating fetal tissue to research (something even Republicans have supported in the past). The people behind the stunt are the same kind of loony right-wing nuts who love trading in bizarre conspiracy theories.

The real question here is why the anti-choice movement is taken seriously at all as a political movement by the media. The movement has a long history of pushing breathless and implausible urban legends that are more at home on some conspiracy theory website than in grown-up politics. Reproductive health care sits at an intersection of human sexuality and medicine, and anti-choicers really love wallowing in the ghastly and the sensational, even if neither has any relationship to reality.

Here are some of the more ridiculous and gross examples.

1. 'The Silent Scream'

The Silent Scream is a bit of religious right propaganda about abortion created in 1984. Simply looking at the video cover, with its horror movie font and pixelated image of a screaming face, should give you an idea of what level of ridiculousness we’re dealing with. The movie, which claims that a 12-week-old fetus “screams” when it is aborted, is so over the top it reads like camp to all but its intended audience of naïve conservative Christians. “The Silent Scream has the appeal of a snuff movie,” said a 1985 review in the New Republic, which also noted its “inappropriate horror B-movie title roll."

2. 'Hooking Kids On Sex'

The Center for Medical Progress is far from the first group making lurid accusations that Planned Parenthood engages in sinister behavior for profit. In 2013, the American Life League (ALL) put out a breathless video titled Hooking Kids On Sex.

“Just as the goal of a drug dealer is to make drug addicts,” the narrator explains, “Planned Parenthood’s goal is to make sex addicts.” The video calls masturbation a “gateway drug” and argues that the purpose of tricking teens into thinking they like sex is to get them to buy up more contraception, which ALL believes is designed to fail, so the young people then have to get even more expensive abortions. Ka-CHING! The flaw in this brilliant conspiracy theory, just like the new one about fetal tissue selling, is that Planned Parenthood is a non-profit, making the profit part of the equation nonsensical.

3. Phony video accusing Planned Parenthood of child sex trafficking.

In 2011, the group Live Action (of which the Center for Medical Progress is a spin-off) made a splash in anti-choice circles with a video purporting to prove that Planned Parenthood engages in child sex trafficking. The video claimed to show undercover investigators posing as pimps who admit to trafficking minors.

The fact that the Planned Parenthood employees continued talking to the phony pimps was held out as evidence of collusion and a cover-up. It was neither. The employees did talk to the self-reported criminals, but then immediately alerted the FBI to the alleged sex trafficking. It also soon became evident that few, if any, of the “colluding” employees actually believed the ruse. But anti-choicers disregarded the obvious conclusion, because they prefer to believe whatever crazy nonsense they can about Planned Parenthood.

4. Abortion 'reversal' scam.

This gambit is one of the loonier anti-choice contrivances to come around in recent years. Yes, they are telling women abortions can be reversed. The weirdness started with an anti-choice doctor named George Delgado, who claimed he could “reverse” medication abortions with shots of progesterone he said would save the embryo before the medications expelled it.

It's not possible, of course, and Delgado's "evidence" that there is any demand for this supposed procedure is iffy, to say the least. This is just more anti-choice theatrics. In reality, 95% of women say their abortion was the right choice for them.

5. The pill kills.

Artificial progesterone is the hero of these mythical tales of “abortion reversal,” but when the same hormone is used (effectively, I might add) to prevent pregnancy, it becomes the demon that does nothing but bring terror and misery. Progesterone is used in birth control pills to suppress ovulation, so women can have sex without getting pregnant. Anti-choice activists oppose this, and so have created a dizzying number of lurid horror stories of all the bad things that will happen if women take the pill.

The American Life League has an annual event, tagged to the anniversary of the legalization of contraception by the Supreme Court, called The Pill Kills. Every year, they highlight some other supposed victim of this killer pill. The pill kills marriage! The pill kills babies! (Anti-choicers claim progesterone “kills” embryos. Yes, the same drug Delgado injects in women to “save” embryos.) The pill kills the environment! (Unlike those harmless fossil fuels.) The pill kills women! (They neglect to mention the stroke risk for frequent pregnancy is much higher.)

The conspiracy theories and theatrics of the anti-choice movement are ridiculous, of course. Yet they serve a serious purpose. The melodrama and lurid claims are meant to distract the public from a serious discussion about important public health issues, like contraception access and safe abortion care. All the blood and orgies talk forces pro-choicers to waste their time debunking right-wing urban legends, instead of focusing the discussion on less exciting but more realistic topics like how empowering women to choose when and if they give birth improves women’s educational and employment opportunities. Important stuff, but boring compared to screeching right-wing nonsense about black market fetal parts and Planned Parenthood pimp orgies. Which is, of course, the point.

Tensing would have gotten away with it had it not been for video footage.

Larry Wilmore, once again, was forced by circumstance to discuss yet another police shooting of an unarmed black man, this time Sam Dubose who was shot in the head by University of Cinncinatti police officer Ray Tensing over a minor traffic violation.

"Now, guys, I know we've reported on these cases a lot," Wilmore confessed, "and if it feels like the Nightly Show is getting repetitive, I totally agree. At this point, my writing staff just has to fill in the names". The Nightly Show host proceeded to show a mad-lib type paragraph where one enters the name, city, and gender of the latest victim of police violence.

Even the man who forcefully indicted Officer Tensing, Prosecutor Joe Deters, is a far from perfect hero, having said fairly racist comments just last month. According to Buzzfeed:

“They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma,” he said, calling the defendants soulless and unsalvageable. “The root cause of this is there’s no discipline in the homes, they don’t go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it’s disgusting.”

Wilmore would lament, "If you treat an entire community this way. Referring to them as 'they' and less than human, are you surprised [the cop] acted his way?"

Tensing would have gotten away with it had it not been for video footage.

Larry Wilmore, once again, was forced by circumstance to discuss yet another police shooting of an unarmed black man, this time Sam Dubose who was shot in the head by University of Cinncinatti police officer Ray Tensing over a minor traffic violation.

"Now, guys, I know we've reported on these cases a lot," Wilmore confessed, "and if it feels like the Nightly Show is getting repetitive, I totally agree. At this point, my writing staff just has to fill in the names". The Nightly Show host proceeded to show a mad-lib type paragraph where one enters the name, city, and gender of the latest victim of police violence.

Even the man who forcefully indicted Officer Tensing, Prosecutor Joe Deters, is a far from perfect hero, having said fairly racist comments just last month. According to Buzzfeed:

“They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma,” he said, calling the defendants soulless and unsalvageable. “The root cause of this is there’s no discipline in the homes, they don’t go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it’s disgusting.”

Wilmore would lament, "If you treat an entire community this way. Referring to them as 'they' and less than human, are you surprised [the cop] acted his way?"

The actor told Howard Stern this week that Trump is "exactly" what Americans deserve .

Perpetually perturbed actor-producer Alec Baldwin sat down with Howard Stern Tuesday to formally announce his endorsement of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Or, rather, to formally announce that the entire political system is broken.

Asked what his thoughts were on the business magnate and vibrant Twitter personality, Baldwin said that, if Trump snags the nomination — or worse, wins the entire presidency — it will be “exactly what we deserve right now with the system we have.”

The “system,” Baldwin went on to explain, is one that is entirely run on money. “All of them across the board are owned by somebody,” he said, pointing the finger back at Democrats. “You’ve got to raise sick amounts of money,” the multi-millionaire added.

“There’s a part of me that would love to see Trump win,” Baldwin said, clarifying that, as a “huge campaign finance reform person,” he knows stuff.

Baldwin will be appearing in “Mission Impossible Rogue Nation” — and likely a city street near you to yell at protesters to hurry up — later this month.

The actor told Howard Stern this week that Trump is "exactly" what Americans deserve .

Perpetually perturbed actor-producer Alec Baldwin sat down with Howard Stern Tuesday to formally announce his endorsement of GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Or, rather, to formally announce that the entire political system is broken.

Asked what his thoughts were on the business magnate and vibrant Twitter personality, Baldwin said that, if Trump snags the nomination — or worse, wins the entire presidency — it will be “exactly what we deserve right now with the system we have.”

The “system,” Baldwin went on to explain, is one that is entirely run on money. “All of them across the board are owned by somebody,” he said, pointing the finger back at Democrats. “You’ve got to raise sick amounts of money,” the multi-millionaire added.

“There’s a part of me that would love to see Trump win,” Baldwin said, clarifying that, as a “huge campaign finance reform person,” he knows stuff.

Baldwin will be appearing in “Mission Impossible Rogue Nation” — and likely a city street near you to yell at protesters to hurry up — later this month.

Watch a clip from that interview below, via SiriusXM’s Howard 100:

]]>
http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/8-stats-reveal-just-how-badly-police-state-hurts-black-women8 Stats that Reveal Just How Badly the Police State Hurts Black Women http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104172130/0/alternet~Stats-that-Reveal-Just-How-Badly-the-Police-State-Hurts-Black-Women

If Sandra Bland were white, there's a good chance she still would be with us.

The outrageous shooting death of Sam Dubose by a Cincinnati cop is grabbing the headlines, but nearly two weeks after Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail after being stopped and brutally arrested for a minor traffic violation, her questionable detainment makes it clear that the criminal justice system is often as brutal to black women as it is to black men. As AlterNet recently reported, Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia overstepped his authority when he asked Bland to put out her cigarette, prolonging and escalating the stop.

Social media reactions to Bland's stop, however, have been divided, in part along racial lines. Many white people have argued that Bland would have left the stop untouched had she simply not given Texas state trooper Brian Encinia an “attitude.” Black people, overwhelmingly, have pointed out that white women regularly engage police officers just as Bland did, yet don’t have to fear being abused for doing so.

Julia Jordan-Zachery, a professor of political science at Providence College whose research focuses on the treatment of black women in the criminal justice system, says Bland’s story and ultimate death is another example of the myth of the strong black woman, who somehow is impervious to pain.

“It wasn’t possible for anyone to understand that she could have been in pain,” Jordan-Zachery told AlterNet. “What we know from literature is that black women are somehow so strong that we can’t even experience physical pain or that our tolerance level for pain is so high that no one ever listens to black women when we say we are experiencing pain.”

Breea C. Willingham, assistant professor of criminal justice at State University of New York in Plattsburg, echoed Jordan-Zachery’s analysis, saying that the disregard for black women’s bodies by American law enforcement dates back to America’s inception.

“From slavery days, during the Civil Rights Movement, and the history of black women in America, black women’s bodies were never really their own,” Willingham, who is currently working on a book that addresses the treatment of black women in prison, told AlterNet. “We’re always under surveillance. If you take the case of 15-year-old Dejerria Becton, in McKinney, Tex., where the cop slammed her on the ground in her bikini, knee in the back of her head, that’s just one example of the fact that there is no regard for our bodies.”

A major barrier in understanding the ways in which the criminal justice system treats black women is the dearth of research on the subject. While statistics on how law enforcement engage black men are plentiful, similar data on black women is limited. But Bland’s death has sparked a rare national conversation that’s forcing the country to take a closer look at how law enforcement and the criminal justice system treat black women.

AlterNet was able to find eight statistically-backed ways in which law enforcement disproportionately abuses black women, despite limited scholarly research devoted to the issue.

Below are some of the most glaring findings, along with some commentary from Willingham and Jordan-Zachery.

1. Black women make up 6 percent of San Francisco’s female population, yet made up 45.5 percent of all women arrested there in 2013.

San Francisco is known as perhaps the most liberal and inclusive city in all of America, but that reputation means little for the black women its police department places in handcuffs. According to the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, black women have been arrested at higher rates than other races of women in the city for the last 23 years at least. In every major arrest category, including possession, prostitution, weapons, drug felonies and marijuana, black women far outpace other races of women. Perhaps the most notable arrest disparity cited in the report is that arrest rates of black women in San Francisco are four times higher than the rest of California.

2. In New York City and Boston schools districts, black girls are suspended and expelled at much higher rates than white girls.

During the 2011-2012 school year, 90 percent of all girls suspended were black, according to a recent report titled, “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected.” Not one white girl was suspended that year. Boston was no better. Sixty-three percent of the girls subjected to expulsion were black during the same time frame, but no white girls were suspended.

“As public concern mounts for the needs of men and boys of color through initiatives like the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper, we must challenge the assumption that the lives of girls and women—who are often left out of the national conversation—are not also at risk,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, the study’s lead author, said.

3. Black women were locked up in state and federal prisons at more than twice the rate of white women.

Overall, black women make up 30 percent of the prison population, despite being 14 percent of the U.S. population, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. There are a wide range of reasons why these disparities exists. A Huffington Post article cites a lack of economic resources, familial support, and systematic oppression as driving actors.

It is difficult to unpack that 30 percent figure because not much research is devoted to understanding black women and incarceration, and policymakers feel no pressure to allocate resources to understanding the issue. Jordan-Zachery says this is due to the either-or politics policymakers engage in. Under this model, they can only address the issues of black men or black women, with women normally being left out.

“We can either talk about black men under the umbrella of black politics, or we can talk about black women,” she said. “We can’t talk about both simultaneously. What I suggest is that it is not a politics of either or. It’s a politics of both and. We have to expand our understanding of politics in a way that sometimes go against the American understanding of politicians that leads us to make false choices. When we include black women, what we’re actually doing is expanding our politics.”

4. Black mothers in New Jersey are more likely than their white counterparts to be deemed “unfit parents.”

New Jersey Public Radio learned through its own investigation that the children of black mothers are four times more likely to be placed in foster care than the children of white mothers. Black children make up just 14 percent of the state population but account for 41 percent of those entering foster care. The report found that even if the mothers are at similar economic levels, the black mothers were still viewed as more unfit that white moms, so this is not a class issue.

Oronde Miller, of the Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare, cited a Texas analysis of unfit parents that reveals poverty was not at play when that state found more black moms unfit than white moms. Instead, he argued that authorities were racially biased in determining who was deemed a good or bad parent.

Jordan-Zachery says this data should inform us on how society views black motherhood.

“Even when we’re seen, we’re seen in a very negative way to justify punishment,” she said. “So, no matter what black women do, we become criminal elements.”

Laura Browder, a Texas mom who had to take her children with her to a child interview at a mall, was arrested for child endangerment a few weeks ago. This despite the fact that her children were a mere 30 feet away from her. We can only wonder if she would have been taken into custody for the same thing if she was white.

“Here’s a woman following the s0-called rules, to use policymakers language,” Jordan-Zachery said. “But in that case, she is still seen as a criminal. What makes her criminal? What makes her criminal in this case is poverty and a lack of child care. This is another element of invisibility. What are you supposed to do? If you leave your children at home, you become a criminal. If you take your children with you, you become a criminal. So, what are black women suppose to do? Not work? If we don’t work, then we become the stereotype.”

The authors of the study researched the criminal records of black women imprisoned in the state of North Carolina between 1995 and 2009 and controlled factors such as misconduct in prison, prior records and conviction dates. What the findings reveal, the authors wrote, is that associations with whiteness play a crucial role in how black women are treated in the criminal justice system.

The ACLU reports that the incarceration rate for black women for drug-related offenses since 1986 has increased by 800 percent, compared to 400 percent for other races of women. It is crucial to note that black and white women uses drugs at the same rate.

8. Black girls make up 14 percent of the U.S. population but make up more than 33 percent of girls detained or committed at juvenile justice system.

Willingham, whose research focuses on the incarceration of black women, says we see a higher rate of black girls behind bars than white girls because they aren’t getting the same support at the juvenile level. A recent report that analyzed how the sexual abuse girls experience can lead to incarceration points out that black girls make up a third of female juveniles detained or committed. Most girls in the juvenile justice system have experienced some form of sexual assault at some point during their lives. However, Willingham says black girls are less likely than white girls to get the rehabilitative support needed to decrease their chances of recidivism.

“Even at a young age, they’re considered ‘bad,’” she said. “For white girls, it’s, ‘Oh, they just have problems, they’ll be OK. We can help them. But black girls, no. They’re just bad.’ And we don’t even get the benefit of the doubt.”

Hopefully, attention to how black women are treated by police and the criminal justice system will change that.

The only reason Americans are beginning to hear about the abuses black women experience at the hand of law enforcement is because of social media, Willingham says. In order to gather a more complete understanding of how police brutality and incarceration impacts black women, more research has to be done. But the recent deaths of Sandra Bland, Kendra and, as of Sunday, Ralkina Jones, all symbolize that black women face many of the same kinds of law enforcement abuse as black men.

“Whether they’re slamming us to the ground or manhandling us, throwing us in jail and finding our dead bodies in them, there is no regard for us,” Willingham said. “It’s just like throwing the trash out. That is how I see the criminal justice system treats black women. It’s just taking the trash out.”

If Sandra Bland were white, there's a good chance she still would be with us.

The outrageous shooting death of Sam Dubose by a Cincinnati cop is grabbing the headlines, but nearly two weeks after Sandra Bland died in a Texas jail after being stopped and brutally arrested for a minor traffic violation, her questionable detainment makes it clear that the criminal justice system is often as brutal to black women as it is to black men. As AlterNet recently reported, Texas State Trooper Brian Encinia overstepped his authority when he asked Bland to put out her cigarette, prolonging and escalating the stop.

Social media reactions to Bland's stop, however, have been divided, in part along racial lines. Many white people have argued that Bland would have left the stop untouched had she simply not given Texas state trooper Brian Encinia an “attitude.” Black people, overwhelmingly, have pointed out that white women regularly engage police officers just as Bland did, yet don’t have to fear being abused for doing so.

Julia Jordan-Zachery, a professor of political science at Providence College whose research focuses on the treatment of black women in the criminal justice system, says Bland’s story and ultimate death is another example of the myth of the strong black woman, who somehow is impervious to pain.

“It wasn’t possible for anyone to understand that she could have been in pain,” Jordan-Zachery told AlterNet. “What we know from literature is that black women are somehow so strong that we can’t even experience physical pain or that our tolerance level for pain is so high that no one ever listens to black women when we say we are experiencing pain.”

Breea C. Willingham, assistant professor of criminal justice at State University of New York in Plattsburg, echoed Jordan-Zachery’s analysis, saying that the disregard for black women’s bodies by American law enforcement dates back to America’s inception.

“From slavery days, during the Civil Rights Movement, and the history of black women in America, black women’s bodies were never really their own,” Willingham, who is currently working on a book that addresses the treatment of black women in prison, told AlterNet. “We’re always under surveillance. If you take the case of 15-year-old Dejerria Becton, in McKinney, Tex., where the cop slammed her on the ground in her bikini, knee in the back of her head, that’s just one example of the fact that there is no regard for our bodies.”

A major barrier in understanding the ways in which the criminal justice system treats black women is the dearth of research on the subject. While statistics on how law enforcement engage black men are plentiful, similar data on black women is limited. But Bland’s death has sparked a rare national conversation that’s forcing the country to take a closer look at how law enforcement and the criminal justice system treat black women.

AlterNet was able to find eight statistically-backed ways in which law enforcement disproportionately abuses black women, despite limited scholarly research devoted to the issue.

Below are some of the most glaring findings, along with some commentary from Willingham and Jordan-Zachery.

1. Black women make up 6 percent of San Francisco’s female population, yet made up 45.5 percent of all women arrested there in 2013.

San Francisco is known as perhaps the most liberal and inclusive city in all of America, but that reputation means little for the black women its police department places in handcuffs. According to the Center for Juvenile and Criminal Justice, black women have been arrested at higher rates than other races of women in the city for the last 23 years at least. In every major arrest category, including possession, prostitution, weapons, drug felonies and marijuana, black women far outpace other races of women. Perhaps the most notable arrest disparity cited in the report is that arrest rates of black women in San Francisco are four times higher than the rest of California.

2. In New York City and Boston schools districts, black girls are suspended and expelled at much higher rates than white girls.

During the 2011-2012 school year, 90 percent of all girls suspended were black, according to a recent report titled, “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected.” Not one white girl was suspended that year. Boston was no better. Sixty-three percent of the girls subjected to expulsion were black during the same time frame, but no white girls were suspended.

“As public concern mounts for the needs of men and boys of color through initiatives like the White House’s My Brother’s Keeper, we must challenge the assumption that the lives of girls and women—who are often left out of the national conversation—are not also at risk,” Kimberlé Crenshaw, the study’s lead author, said.

3. Black women were locked up in state and federal prisons at more than twice the rate of white women.

Overall, black women make up 30 percent of the prison population, despite being 14 percent of the U.S. population, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. There are a wide range of reasons why these disparities exists. A Huffington Post article cites a lack of economic resources, familial support, and systematic oppression as driving actors.

It is difficult to unpack that 30 percent figure because not much research is devoted to understanding black women and incarceration, and policymakers feel no pressure to allocate resources to understanding the issue. Jordan-Zachery says this is due to the either-or politics policymakers engage in. Under this model, they can only address the issues of black men or black women, with women normally being left out.

“We can either talk about black men under the umbrella of black politics, or we can talk about black women,” she said. “We can’t talk about both simultaneously. What I suggest is that it is not a politics of either or. It’s a politics of both and. We have to expand our understanding of politics in a way that sometimes go against the American understanding of politicians that leads us to make false choices. When we include black women, what we’re actually doing is expanding our politics.”

4. Black mothers in New Jersey are more likely than their white counterparts to be deemed “unfit parents.”

New Jersey Public Radio learned through its own investigation that the children of black mothers are four times more likely to be placed in foster care than the children of white mothers. Black children make up just 14 percent of the state population but account for 41 percent of those entering foster care. The report found that even if the mothers are at similar economic levels, the black mothers were still viewed as more unfit that white moms, so this is not a class issue.

Oronde Miller, of the Alliance for Racial Equity in Child Welfare, cited a Texas analysis of unfit parents that reveals poverty was not at play when that state found more black moms unfit than white moms. Instead, he argued that authorities were racially biased in determining who was deemed a good or bad parent.

Jordan-Zachery says this data should inform us on how society views black motherhood.

“Even when we’re seen, we’re seen in a very negative way to justify punishment,” she said. “So, no matter what black women do, we become criminal elements.”

Laura Browder, a Texas mom who had to take her children with her to a child interview at a mall, was arrested for child endangerment a few weeks ago. This despite the fact that her children were a mere 30 feet away from her. We can only wonder if she would have been taken into custody for the same thing if she was white.

“Here’s a woman following the s0-called rules, to use policymakers language,” Jordan-Zachery said. “But in that case, she is still seen as a criminal. What makes her criminal? What makes her criminal in this case is poverty and a lack of child care. This is another element of invisibility. What are you supposed to do? If you leave your children at home, you become a criminal. If you take your children with you, you become a criminal. So, what are black women suppose to do? Not work? If we don’t work, then we become the stereotype.”

The authors of the study researched the criminal records of black women imprisoned in the state of North Carolina between 1995 and 2009 and controlled factors such as misconduct in prison, prior records and conviction dates. What the findings reveal, the authors wrote, is that associations with whiteness play a crucial role in how black women are treated in the criminal justice system.

The ACLU reports that the incarceration rate for black women for drug-related offenses since 1986 has increased by 800 percent, compared to 400 percent for other races of women. It is crucial to note that black and white women uses drugs at the same rate.

8. Black girls make up 14 percent of the U.S. population but make up more than 33 percent of girls detained or committed at juvenile justice system.

Willingham, whose research focuses on the incarceration of black women, says we see a higher rate of black girls behind bars than white girls because they aren’t getting the same support at the juvenile level. A recent report that analyzed how the sexual abuse girls experience can lead to incarceration points out that black girls make up a third of female juveniles detained or committed. Most girls in the juvenile justice system have experienced some form of sexual assault at some point during their lives. However, Willingham says black girls are less likely than white girls to get the rehabilitative support needed to decrease their chances of recidivism.

“Even at a young age, they’re considered ‘bad,’” she said. “For white girls, it’s, ‘Oh, they just have problems, they’ll be OK. We can help them. But black girls, no. They’re just bad.’ And we don’t even get the benefit of the doubt.”

Hopefully, attention to how black women are treated by police and the criminal justice system will change that.

The only reason Americans are beginning to hear about the abuses black women experience at the hand of law enforcement is because of social media, Willingham says. In order to gather a more complete understanding of how police brutality and incarceration impacts black women, more research has to be done. But the recent deaths of Sandra Bland, Kendra and, as of Sunday, Ralkina Jones, all symbolize that black women face many of the same kinds of law enforcement abuse as black men.

“Whether they’re slamming us to the ground or manhandling us, throwing us in jail and finding our dead bodies in them, there is no regard for us,” Willingham said. “It’s just like throwing the trash out. That is how I see the criminal justice system treats black women. It’s just taking the trash out.”

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http://www.alternet.org/economy/paul-krugman-chinas-leaders-have-no-idea-what-they-are-doingPaul Krugman: China's Leaders Have No Idea What They Are Doinghttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104296818/0/alternet~Paul-Krugman-Chinas-Leaders-Have-No-Idea-What-They-Are-Doing

Another thing Donald Trump is totally wrong about.

Paul Krugman turns his attention to China in Friday's column, and determines that despite Donald Trump's assertion that China is "eating our lunch," the country's leaders have no idea what they are doing. Politicians who happen to preside over booms (Jeb Bush) tend to take credit for those booms, Krugman points out. China is no exception.

"This is the context in which you need to understand the strange goings-on in China’s stock market," he writes. "In and of itself, the price of Chinese equities shouldn’t matter all that much. But the authorities have chosen to put their credibility on the line by trying to control that market — and are in the process of demonstrating that, China’s remarkable success over the past 25 years notwithstanding, the nation’s rulers have no idea what they’re doing."

What China is wrestling with is managing a period when growth must necessarily slow. Not easy, of course, because, per Krugman:

China’s economic structure is built around the presumption of very rapid growth. Enterprises, many of them state-owned, hoard their earnings rather than return them to the public, which has stunted family incomes; at the same time, individual savings are high, in part because the social safety net is weak, so families accumulate cash just in case. As a result, Chinese spending is lopsided, with very high rates of investment but a very low share of consumer demand in gross domestic product.

This structure was workable as long as torrid economic growth offered sufficient investment opportunities. But now investment is running into rapidly decreasing returns. The result is a nasty transition problem: What happens if investment drops off but consumption doesn’t rise fast enough to fill the gap?

What China needs are reforms that spread the purchasing power — and it has, to be fair, been making efforts in that direction. But by all accounts these efforts have fallen short. For example, it has introduced what is supposed to be a national health care system, but in practice many workers fall through the cracks.

Meanwhile, China’s leaders appear to be terrified — probably for political reasons — by the prospect of even a brief recession. So they’ve been pumping up demand by, in effect, force-feeding the system with credit, including fostering a stock market boom. Such measures can work for a while, and all might have been well if the big reforms were moving fast enough. But they aren’t, and the result is a bubble that wants to burst.

The response has been an "an all-out effort to prop up stock prices," Krugman continues, which might be a good strategy for a couple of days, but not something to be sustained. Here is the irony: "It also looks as if the Chinese government, having encouraged citizens to buy stocks, now feels that it must defend stock prices to preserve its reputation. And what it’s ending up doing, of course, is shredding that reputation at record speed."

Leadership is something that seems in short supply. And it is always ordinary people who pay the price.

Paul Krugman turns his attention to China in Friday's column, and determines that despite Donald Trump's assertion that China is "eating our lunch," the country's leaders have no idea what they are doing. Politicians who happen to preside over booms (Jeb Bush) tend to take credit for those booms, Krugman points out. China is no exception.

"This is the context in which you need to understand the strange goings-on in China’s stock market," he writes. "In and of itself, the price of Chinese equities shouldn’t matter all that much. But the authorities have chosen to put their credibility on the line by trying to control that market — and are in the process of demonstrating that, China’s remarkable success over the past 25 years notwithstanding, the nation’s rulers have no idea what they’re doing."

What China is wrestling with is managing a period when growth must necessarily slow. Not easy, of course, because, per Krugman:

China’s economic structure is built around the presumption of very rapid growth. Enterprises, many of them state-owned, hoard their earnings rather than return them to the public, which has stunted family incomes; at the same time, individual savings are high, in part because the social safety net is weak, so families accumulate cash just in case. As a result, Chinese spending is lopsided, with very high rates of investment but a very low share of consumer demand in gross domestic product.

This structure was workable as long as torrid economic growth offered sufficient investment opportunities. But now investment is running into rapidly decreasing returns. The result is a nasty transition problem: What happens if investment drops off but consumption doesn’t rise fast enough to fill the gap?

What China needs are reforms that spread the purchasing power — and it has, to be fair, been making efforts in that direction. But by all accounts these efforts have fallen short. For example, it has introduced what is supposed to be a national health care system, but in practice many workers fall through the cracks.

Meanwhile, China’s leaders appear to be terrified — probably for political reasons — by the prospect of even a brief recession. So they’ve been pumping up demand by, in effect, force-feeding the system with credit, including fostering a stock market boom. Such measures can work for a while, and all might have been well if the big reforms were moving fast enough. But they aren’t, and the result is a bubble that wants to burst.

The response has been an "an all-out effort to prop up stock prices," Krugman continues, which might be a good strategy for a couple of days, but not something to be sustained. Here is the irony: "It also looks as if the Chinese government, having encouraged citizens to buy stocks, now feels that it must defend stock prices to preserve its reputation. And what it’s ending up doing, of course, is shredding that reputation at record speed."

Leadership is something that seems in short supply. And it is always ordinary people who pay the price.

But Alabama has brought efforts to restrict abortion to a whole new level, as the state tried this week to stop a woman from getting an abortion by terminating her parental rights... to her fetus.

District attorney Chris Connolly filed a petition to terminate an incarcerated woman’s parental rights for the sole purpose of stopping her from ending her pregnancy. The woman, known as Jane Doe, had filed a lawsuit in order to be granted a furlough to obtain the procedure. Connolly told a local paper, “Our position, if the termination for parental rights is granted, is that [she] would not have standing to obtain the abortion.” He’s arguing that Doe’s parental rights should be rescinded because she is facing charges of chemical endangerment of a child.

Alabama ACLU legal director Randall Marshall, one of the woman’s lawyers, told the Huffington Post that this is the first time the state has used these charges to try to prevent an abortion. “It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life,” he said.

Baffling legal maneuvering aside, what’s worst in cases like this one in Alabama – where the state focuses its misogynist ire on the most marginalized women – is that they’re commonplace. Women in prison, women who use drugs, women of color and low-income women have long been targets for anti-choice legislators, not just because they have less support to fight back, but because the people attacking them believe that no one will care. It’s nastiness of the worst sort.

Abortion is legal. And while I’d like to say that no amount of strange, overreaching and insulting litigation or legislation will change that, it has, and it still could. And if it does, we know who will be penalized most.

But Alabama has brought efforts to restrict abortion to a whole new level, as the state tried this week to stop a woman from getting an abortion by terminating her parental rights... to her fetus.

District attorney Chris Connolly filed a petition to terminate an incarcerated woman’s parental rights for the sole purpose of stopping her from ending her pregnancy. The woman, known as Jane Doe, had filed a lawsuit in order to be granted a furlough to obtain the procedure. Connolly told a local paper, “Our position, if the termination for parental rights is granted, is that [she] would not have standing to obtain the abortion.” He’s arguing that Doe’s parental rights should be rescinded because she is facing charges of chemical endangerment of a child.

Alabama ACLU legal director Randall Marshall, one of the woman’s lawyers, told the Huffington Post that this is the first time the state has used these charges to try to prevent an abortion. “It appears to me that what the state is attempting to do is turn Jane Doe into a vessel, and control every aspect of her life,” he said.

Baffling legal maneuvering aside, what’s worst in cases like this one in Alabama – where the state focuses its misogynist ire on the most marginalized women – is that they’re commonplace. Women in prison, women who use drugs, women of color and low-income women have long been targets for anti-choice legislators, not just because they have less support to fight back, but because the people attacking them believe that no one will care. It’s nastiness of the worst sort.

Abortion is legal. And while I’d like to say that no amount of strange, overreaching and insulting litigation or legislation will change that, it has, and it still could. And if it does, we know who will be penalized most.

Related Stories

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http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/bernie-sanders-draws-line-sand-we-need-medicare-all-not-cutbacks-will-kill-ourBernie Sanders: We Need Medicare for All, Not Cutbacks That Will Kill Our Seniors http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104146840/0/alternet~Bernie-Sanders-We-Need-Medicare-for-All-Not-Cutbacks-That-Will-Kill-Our-Seniors

The 50th anniversary of Medicare is a reminder that this program needs to be stronger to meet today's challenges.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Maryland Representative Donna Edwards joined the rally celebrating the 50th anniversary of Medicare in Washington, D.C. this Thursday with several hundred nurses, health care workers, and labor allies.

Senator Sanders touted the success of the Medicare program and the millions of seniors and disabled patients it has helped. "Before Medicare, If you were poor and old or sick, you had no options, you died or you suffered," he said.

The familiar Sanders crusade to fix financial inequalities is a key reason Sanders says he supports a single-payer system and promised to announce legislation within the next year. "We need to expand Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child," he told the cheering crowd. "Every year, thousands die just because they can't afford to go to the doctor. No one should go into the hospital and have to file for bankruptcy when they come out." The Sanders plan, he said, will provide healthcare through the most "cost effective way, and that is a Medicare for all."

Recent suggestions from Republican Party presidential candidate Jeb Bush that Medicare should be phased out has lead to linguistic punches from many progressive thinkers including economist Paul Krugman, who wrote this week "It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful."

Senator Sanders told The Hill Bush's comments are an example of how far right the Republican Party has become when their so-called moderate candidate is advocating "phasing out" Medicare.

"As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Medicare, it is important that we defend this enormously important program rather than talk about ending it," Sanders continued. "Medicare provides health care to 51 million American seniors and people with disabilities and has saved the lives of countless Americans. Further, as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the finances of Medicare have been significantly improved and it is now fully funded for the next 15 years through 2030. Our goal as a nation should be to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all Americans, not end a highly-successful program which protects seniors and the disabled."

Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD) followed Senator Sanders speech with a powerful story about her grandfather who died at an early age forcing her grandmother to scrape together money to cover her healthcare costs.

“My grandmother lived much of her life before Medicare," Edwards told AlterNet in a statement "I know how much she and our family struggled to pay medical bills. Thanks to Medicare, Americans like my grandmother can see their doctor and not go broke paying medical bills. This is why I continue to fight to protect Medicare and ensure that all Americans can lead healthy and productive lives."

"After 50 years, we have a lot of experience with Medicare," National Nurses United co-President Jean Ross, RN, said in a statement. "Enough time to see that it works, has kept tens of millions of Americans out of poverty, and remains enormously popular."

The coalition of nurses and other health care professionals have organized a day of actions including lobbying legislators in Washington to encourage expanding Medicare for all. Other cities including Boston, Detroit, El Paso, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Oakland, Portland, Maine, St. Paul, and Lakewood, Ohio will be holding rallies, town hall meetings, parties, picnics and barbecues where nurses and other health care workers can celebrate the success of Medicare and talk about ways to expand the program to cover more people.

The 50th anniversary of Medicare is a reminder that this program needs to be stronger to meet today's challenges.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Maryland Representative Donna Edwards joined the rally celebrating the 50th anniversary of Medicare in Washington, D.C. this Thursday with several hundred nurses, health care workers, and labor allies.

Senator Sanders touted the success of the Medicare program and the millions of seniors and disabled patients it has helped. "Before Medicare, If you were poor and old or sick, you had no options, you died or you suffered," he said.

The familiar Sanders crusade to fix financial inequalities is a key reason Sanders says he supports a single-payer system and promised to announce legislation within the next year. "We need to expand Medicare to cover every man, woman, and child," he told the cheering crowd. "Every year, thousands die just because they can't afford to go to the doctor. No one should go into the hospital and have to file for bankruptcy when they come out." The Sanders plan, he said, will provide healthcare through the most "cost effective way, and that is a Medicare for all."

Recent suggestions from Republican Party presidential candidate Jeb Bush that Medicare should be phased out has lead to linguistic punches from many progressive thinkers including economist Paul Krugman, who wrote this week "It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful."

Senator Sanders told The Hill Bush's comments are an example of how far right the Republican Party has become when their so-called moderate candidate is advocating "phasing out" Medicare.

"As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Medicare, it is important that we defend this enormously important program rather than talk about ending it," Sanders continued. "Medicare provides health care to 51 million American seniors and people with disabilities and has saved the lives of countless Americans. Further, as a result of the Affordable Care Act, the finances of Medicare have been significantly improved and it is now fully funded for the next 15 years through 2030. Our goal as a nation should be to join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all Americans, not end a highly-successful program which protects seniors and the disabled."

Representative Donna Edwards (D-MD) followed Senator Sanders speech with a powerful story about her grandfather who died at an early age forcing her grandmother to scrape together money to cover her healthcare costs.

“My grandmother lived much of her life before Medicare," Edwards told AlterNet in a statement "I know how much she and our family struggled to pay medical bills. Thanks to Medicare, Americans like my grandmother can see their doctor and not go broke paying medical bills. This is why I continue to fight to protect Medicare and ensure that all Americans can lead healthy and productive lives."

"After 50 years, we have a lot of experience with Medicare," National Nurses United co-President Jean Ross, RN, said in a statement. "Enough time to see that it works, has kept tens of millions of Americans out of poverty, and remains enormously popular."

The coalition of nurses and other health care professionals have organized a day of actions including lobbying legislators in Washington to encourage expanding Medicare for all. Other cities including Boston, Detroit, El Paso, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Oakland, Portland, Maine, St. Paul, and Lakewood, Ohio will be holding rallies, town hall meetings, parties, picnics and barbecues where nurses and other health care workers can celebrate the success of Medicare and talk about ways to expand the program to cover more people.

Related Stories

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http://www.alternet.org/media/jon-stewart-trump-supposed-buy-candidates-not-become-one-videoJon Stewart: 'Trump Is Supposed to Buy Candidates, Not Become One' (VIDEO)http://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104276696/0/alternet~Jon-Stewart-Trump-Is-Supposed-to-Buy-Candidates-Not-Become-One-VIDEO

Billionaire donors are getting nervous one of their own is rising to the top.

Jon Stewart, still feeding his Donald Trump addiction, took notice of a strange plot twist in the Trump soap opera: billionaire funders were leaving Camp Donald in favor of the "safer" candidates like Bush and Rubio.

The irony for Stewart was too great to go unnoticed: After four years of the GOP trying to rebrand itself as anything but the party of rich, racist white men, along comes the king of rich, racist white men, Donald Trump.

"The living embodiment of everything the Republicans were trying to exorcise from their party, just escalated down on their parade", the Daily Show host smugly said before playing a series of clips of Trump being a wealthy, racist buffoon.

"This Trump guy", Stewart said impersonating an outraged establishment Republican, "is a rich, crazy, egotistical monster. People like him are supposed to buy the candidates -- not be them!"

Billionaire donors are getting nervous one of their own is rising to the top.

Jon Stewart, still feeding his Donald Trump addiction, took notice of a strange plot twist in the Trump soap opera: billionaire funders were leaving Camp Donald in favor of the "safer" candidates like Bush and Rubio.

The irony for Stewart was too great to go unnoticed: After four years of the GOP trying to rebrand itself as anything but the party of rich, racist white men, along comes the king of rich, racist white men, Donald Trump.

"The living embodiment of everything the Republicans were trying to exorcise from their party, just escalated down on their parade", the Daily Show host smugly said before playing a series of clips of Trump being a wealthy, racist buffoon.

"This Trump guy", Stewart said impersonating an outraged establishment Republican, "is a rich, crazy, egotistical monster. People like him are supposed to buy the candidates -- not be them!"

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http://www.alternet.org/environment/i-am-cecil-connecting-dots-between-one-lion-and-billions-suffering-animalsCecil Lives On: Connecting the Dots Between One Lion and Billions of Suffering Animalshttp://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/104299084/0/alternet~Cecil-Lives-On-Connecting-the-Dots-Between-One-Lion-and-Billions-of-Suffering-Animals

Can the widespread outrage about the killing of Cecil the lion help raise consciousness about the suffering of other animals?

In the past couple of days, millions of people on social media, who don’t normally address animal cruelty, have expressed sorrow and outrage about the murder of Cecil, the beloved lion in Zimbabwe.

While we have people’s attention, how can we tap into these powerful emotions to awaken them to the plight of other animals who are equally deserving of a life free from harm?

How can we help people connect the dots between Cecil, who endured 40 hours of agony, and the billions of farm animals whose entire lives are consumed by suffering?

Please use this rare moment in time when the world is paying attention to ensure that Cecil did not die in vain and that his murder is wake-up call to the millions of people who have not made the connection between the animals we love – like lions, whales and dogs – and the animals we consume. They are all the same.

One easy way to help people make the connection is to share these images on Facebook and convey your thoughts about why farm animals deserve to live in peace just as much as Cecil.

Can the widespread outrage about the killing of Cecil the lion help raise consciousness about the suffering of other animals?

In the past couple of days, millions of people on social media, who don’t normally address animal cruelty, have expressed sorrow and outrage about the murder of Cecil, the beloved lion in Zimbabwe.

While we have people’s attention, how can we tap into these powerful emotions to awaken them to the plight of other animals who are equally deserving of a life free from harm?

How can we help people connect the dots between Cecil, who endured 40 hours of agony, and the billions of farm animals whose entire lives are consumed by suffering?

Please use this rare moment in time when the world is paying attention to ensure that Cecil did not die in vain and that his murder is wake-up call to the millions of people who have not made the connection between the animals we love – like lions, whales and dogs – and the animals we consume. They are all the same.

One easy way to help people make the connection is to share these images on Facebook and convey your thoughts about why farm animals deserve to live in peace just as much as Cecil.

Republicans hoping to take back the White House have found a badly coiffed billionaire standing in their way.

It’s been more than a month since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for presidency. And rather than quickly self-combust, as many expected, the Donald has actually enjoyed a cresting wave of support, taking him straight to the top of the GOP field. Not even a string of high-profile flaps seem to have any impact on the man’s surging popularity.

While once thought of as a flash in the pan, Trump’s candidacy has proven to be a far bigger problem for the Republican Party than establishment figures ever expected. In coping with such a colossal headache, the Party seems to be following the Kübler-Ross model of grief – the model frequently used to describe how people come to grips with the death of a loved one.

It’s that series of things that Trump has said, starting with the claim that immigrants are rapists,, which Republicans (fairly) worry might damage the party brand, that has led them to start lashing out — although the response was muted, as anything short of full-blown nativism risks damaging the national prospects of GOP candidates these days.

Trump’s attack on John McCain’s service in Vietnam earlier this month finally gave Republicans the opportunity to get mad without losing political points with the paleoconservative crowd. So, in spite of the Republican Party’s own serial use of slurs against war heroes for political gain, just about every top figure in the party (save Ted Cruz) pounced on Trump’s statement and declared he had gone too far. Many believed Trump’s indelicacy would end his campaign.

Except – as just a few predicted – it didn’t work out that way. Indeed, his standing in the polls actually improved, perhaps bolstered by the many base voters who aren’t as fond of John McCain as the beltway media.

While Republicans may try to attack Trump on issue after issue as a way to try to damage the blustery billionaire, it’s not clear that will do anything but bolster his outsider cred among voters who actually share some of the same values — even if mainstream Republicans would like to disown the most inflammatory versions thereof.

Step 3: Bargaining

As Trump’s continued strength — and decisive pull in any third-party bid has become clear — the focus has shifted to securing assurances that he won’t withdraw his considerable fortune from the GOP and run on the Donald Trump Party ticket.

Similarly, the Republicans are slightly changing the rules of the game to boost more palatable candidates, like the also-ran Lindsey Graham (whose candidacy got its most attention ever when Trump handed out Graham’s personal cell phone number earlier this month). If Trump continues to dominate in the polls, operatives will almost certainly approach Trump about maybe accepting a handler who could prepare him for the more traditional parts of campaigning — and temper his most outrageous statements.

But because of Trump’s fortune, he cannot possibly be controlled with the monetary promises of the Kochs or Sheldon Adelson. The GOP may start bargaining with Trump, but he still holds most of the cards. That means he’ll probably continue to violate Reagan’s 11th commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican,” as he did in response to being called a dumb-dumb by a Scott Walker funder the other day.

Depression

All of which means that — so long as the base continues to eat up Trump’s schtick –the Republicans are going to be stuck with him, because they have few means of controlling him and even fewer to limit any damage he might do if provoked. I don’t wish depression on those faced with the prospect of Donald Trump leading their party. But I understand why they might feel that way.

Acceptance

If all proceeds as things appear to be proceeding — although, yes, it is far too early to say for certain that it will — Republicans will ultimately be applauding the prospect of President Trump. complete with the possibility he’ll appoint Dennis Rodman (drawing on his diplomatic trip to North Korea) as Ambassador to China. If and when Trump becomes the only viable opponent for Hillary Clinton, Republicans will be forced to accept their fate and hope for the best.

And with it, they may well recognize that their ideological celebration of the rich and of demagoguery have delivered them precisely the candidate they’ve asked for.

Republicans hoping to take back the White House have found a badly coiffed billionaire standing in their way.

It’s been more than a month since Donald Trump announced his candidacy for presidency. And rather than quickly self-combust, as many expected, the Donald has actually enjoyed a cresting wave of support, taking him straight to the top of the GOP field. Not even a string of high-profile flaps seem to have any impact on the man’s surging popularity.

While once thought of as a flash in the pan, Trump’s candidacy has proven to be a far bigger problem for the Republican Party than establishment figures ever expected. In coping with such a colossal headache, the Party seems to be following the Kübler-Ross model of grief – the model frequently used to describe how people come to grips with the death of a loved one.

It’s that series of things that Trump has said, starting with the claim that immigrants are rapists,, which Republicans (fairly) worry might damage the party brand, that has led them to start lashing out — although the response was muted, as anything short of full-blown nativism risks damaging the national prospects of GOP candidates these days.

Trump’s attack on John McCain’s service in Vietnam earlier this month finally gave Republicans the opportunity to get mad without losing political points with the paleoconservative crowd. So, in spite of the Republican Party’s own serial use of slurs against war heroes for political gain, just about every top figure in the party (save Ted Cruz) pounced on Trump’s statement and declared he had gone too far. Many believed Trump’s indelicacy would end his campaign.

Except – as just a few predicted – it didn’t work out that way. Indeed, his standing in the polls actually improved, perhaps bolstered by the many base voters who aren’t as fond of John McCain as the beltway media.

While Republicans may try to attack Trump on issue after issue as a way to try to damage the blustery billionaire, it’s not clear that will do anything but bolster his outsider cred among voters who actually share some of the same values — even if mainstream Republicans would like to disown the most inflammatory versions thereof.

Step 3: Bargaining

As Trump’s continued strength — and decisive pull in any third-party bid has become clear — the focus has shifted to securing assurances that he won’t withdraw his considerable fortune from the GOP and run on the Donald Trump Party ticket.

Similarly, the Republicans are slightly changing the rules of the game to boost more palatable candidates, like the also-ran Lindsey Graham (whose candidacy got its most attention ever when Trump handed out Graham’s personal cell phone number earlier this month). If Trump continues to dominate in the polls, operatives will almost certainly approach Trump about maybe accepting a handler who could prepare him for the more traditional parts of campaigning — and temper his most outrageous statements.

But because of Trump’s fortune, he cannot possibly be controlled with the monetary promises of the Kochs or Sheldon Adelson. The GOP may start bargaining with Trump, but he still holds most of the cards. That means he’ll probably continue to violate Reagan’s 11th commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of any Republican,” as he did in response to being called a dumb-dumb by a Scott Walker funder the other day.

Depression

All of which means that — so long as the base continues to eat up Trump’s schtick –the Republicans are going to be stuck with him, because they have few means of controlling him and even fewer to limit any damage he might do if provoked. I don’t wish depression on those faced with the prospect of Donald Trump leading their party. But I understand why they might feel that way.

Acceptance

If all proceeds as things appear to be proceeding — although, yes, it is far too early to say for certain that it will — Republicans will ultimately be applauding the prospect of President Trump. complete with the possibility he’ll appoint Dennis Rodman (drawing on his diplomatic trip to North Korea) as Ambassador to China. If and when Trump becomes the only viable opponent for Hillary Clinton, Republicans will be forced to accept their fate and hope for the best.

And with it, they may well recognize that their ideological celebration of the rich and of demagoguery have delivered them precisely the candidate they’ve asked for.